Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Henry Fielding

As a great part of the uneasiness of matrimony arises from mere trifles, it would be wise in every young married man to enter into an agreement with his wife, that in all disputes of this kind the party who was most convinced they were right should always surrender the victory. By which means both would be more forward to give up the cause.

Cause | Character | Man | Matrimony | Means | Right | Surrender | Trifles | Wife | Wise |

Henry Fielding

Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others concerned with him have done evil! If a man has acted right, he has done well, though alone; if wrong, the sanction of all mankind will not justify him.

Character | Evil | Good | Justify | Man | Mankind | Right | Will | Wrong |

Benjamin Franklin

Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.

Character | Search |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others as by self-examination thoroughly to know our own.

Character | Nothing | Self | Will |

William Feather

Getting alone with others is the essence of getting ahead, success being linked with cooperation.

Character | Cooperation | Success |

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, born Margaret Power

One of the almost numberless advantages of goodness is, that it blinds its possessor to many of those faults in others which could not fail to be detected by the morally defective. A consciousness of unworthiness renders people extremely quick-sighted in discerning the vices of their neighbors; as person scan easily discover in others the symptoms of those diseases beneath which they themselves have suffered.

Character | Consciousness | People |

Henry Fielding

Contempt of others is the truest symptom of a base and bad heart, while it suggests itself to the mean and the vile, and tickles their little fancy on every occasion, it never enters the great and good mind but on the strongest motives; nor is it then a welcome guest - affording only an uneasy sensation, and bringing always with it a mixture of concern and compassion.

Character | Compassion | Contempt | Good | Heart | Little | Mind | Motives |

Henry Home, Lord Kames

When you descant on the faults of others, consider whether you be not guilty of the same. To gain knowledge of ourselves, the best way is to convert the imperfections of others into a mirror for discovering our own.

Character | Knowledge | Guilty |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

The praises of others may be of use in teaching us, not what we are, but what we ought to be.

Character | Wisdom |

N. Grou

A simple heart will love all that is most precious on earth, husband or wife, parent or child, brother or friend, without marring its singleness; external things will have no attraction save inasmuch as they lead souls to Him; all exaggeration or unreality, affection and falsehood must pass away from such a one, as the dews dry up before the sunshine. The single motive is to please God, and hence arises total indifference as to what others say and think, so that words and actions are perfectly simple and natural, as in his sight.

Character | Earth | Exaggeration | Falsehood | Friend | God | Heart | Husband | Indifference | Love | Wife | Will | Words | Parent |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

They who boast of their tolerance merely give others leave to be as careless about religion as they are themselves. A walrus might as well pride itself on its endurance of cold.

Character | Endurance | Pride | Religion |

Sidney Greenberg

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.

Character | Man |

James Hadfield, fully Captain James Arthur Hadfield

It is literally true that in judging others we trumpet abroad our secret faults.

Character |

Hugh Reginald Haweis

You can only make others better by being good yourself.

Better | Character | Good |

Claude-Adrien Helvétius

When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in others respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.

Avarice | Character | Evil | Giving | Good | Hate | Injustice | Injustice | Men | Nothing | Society | Guilty |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What is uttered from the heart alone will win the hearts of others to your own.

Character | Heart | Will |

Richard Heinzelmann

Be and continue poor, young man, while others around you grow rich by; fraud and disloyalty; be without place or power, while others beg their way upwards; bear the pain of disappointed hopes, while others gain their by; flattery; forego the gracious pressure of the hand, for which others cringe and crawl. Wrap yourself in your own virtue, and seek a friend and your daily bread. If you have, in such a course, grown gray; with unblenched honor, bless God and die.

Character | Disloyalty | Flattery | Fraud | Friend | God | Honor | Man | Pain | Power | Virtue | Virtue | God |

John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

Guilt is anger directed at ourselves - at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others - at what they did or did not do.

Anger | Character | Guilt | Resentment |

Yosef Y. Hurwitz

An honor-seeker is not really interested in self-improvement. He is only interested in gaining approval from others. Hence, he will disregard any fault he has if he knows that others will not notice it. On the other hand, a person who is able to forego his honor is able to focus on truth. His only thought is to do the right thing and he is willing to sacrifice his honor for his principles. Such a person will eventually receive honor, for he will constantly work on improving himself.

Character | Fault | Focus | Honor | Improvement | Principles | Receive | Right | Sacrifice | Self | Self-improvement | Thought | Truth | Will | Work | Approval | Fault | Thought |

William James

The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is noninterference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.

Character | Happy | Learn |