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

E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe

The greatest humiliation in life is to work hard on something from which you expect great appreciation, and then fail to get it.

Appreciation | Character | Life | Life | Work |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

Relationships can become a doorway into a new life - surrendering, growing, giving, creating - or a revolving door which gives us movement without progress and deposits us back into ourselves, not as we could become but as we are.

Character | Giving | Life | Life | Progress |

William James

We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient realization of poverty could have meant; the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paving our way by what we are and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly, - the more athletic trim, in short, the fighting shape.

Character | Fighting | Indifference | Life | Life | Poverty | Power | Right | Soul |

Victor Hugo

To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures.

Character | Falsehood | Life | Life |

Pinchos Hurwitz

A large amount of physical pain and suffering is caused by one’s thoughts and behaviors. The desire for food causes people to overeat and consume food that is harmful to their health. Envy, anger, and honor-seeking lead to diseases of the heart, high blood pressure, nervous tension and excessive stress. Moreover, even when you pain is basically caused by physical symptoms, your mental attitude towards the pain can greatly increase or decrease the actual amount of suffering you experience. The pain you suffer from illnesses and injuries is frequently more psychological than physical. A person who learns to master a calm and serene attitude towards life trains himself to tolerate physical pain and the actual suffering is greatly lessened.

Anger | Character | Desire | Envy | Experience | Health | Heart | Honor | Life | Life | Pain | People | Suffering |

Paul W. Ivey, fully Paul Wesley Ivey

Study the unusually successful people you know, and you will find them imbued with enthusiasm for their work which is contagious. Not only are they themselves excited about what they are doing, but they also get you excited.

Character | Enthusiasm | People | Study | Will | Work |

David Hume

The chief and most confounding objection to excessive skepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigor. We need only ask such a skeptic, what his meaning is? And what he proposes by all these curious researches? He is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer.

Character | Force | Good | Meaning | Need | Skepticism |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

It is our daily duty to consider that in all circumstances of life, pleasurable, painful, or otherwise, the conduct of every human being affects, more or less, the happiness of others, especially of those in the same house; and that, as life is made up, for the most part, not of great occasions, but of small everyday moments, it is the giving to those moments their greatest amount of peace, pleasantness, and security, that contributes most to the sum of human good. Be peaceable. Be cheerful. Be true.

Character | Circumstances | Conduct | Duty | Giving | Good | Life | Life | Peace | Security | Happiness |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Most people tend to perform the actions that require least effort, to think the thoughts that are easiest, to feel the emotions that are most vulgarly commonplace, to give the rein to desires that are most nearly animal.

Character | Effort | Emotions | People | Think |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.

Body | Character | Consistency | Life | Life | Mind | Nature | People |

William James

I [have] often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one.

Argument | Character | Existence | Life | Life | Man |

Trevor Huddleston

We are created by God for union with Himself... That’s really the meaning of heaven too: fulfillment, wholeness... Though no man has seen God, we have to learn how to love God through loving one another.

Character | Fulfillment | God | Heaven | Love | Man | Meaning | Wholeness | God | Learn |

Victor Hugo

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

Character | Courage | God | Life | Life | Patience | Peace | Wisdom | God |

Pinchos Hurwitz

“What thoughts were going through your mind when you received so much honor?” “I imagined that it was my funeral procession and the people were escorting me to the cemetery. This prevented me from feeling arrogant.”

Character | Honor | Mind | People |

David Hume

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Universe |

Adolf Ellegård Jensen

It is the common mark of all animal life that it can maintain itself only by destroying life.

Character | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Juan Ramón Jimenez, fully Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón

The greatest assassin of life is haste, the desire to reach things before the right time which means overreaching them.

Character | Desire | Haste | Life | Life | Means | Right | Time |

Victor Hugo

The greatest happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather loved in spite of ourselves.

Character | Life | Life | Happiness |

William Ralph Inge

As a rule, the game of life is worth playing, but the struggle is the prize.

Character | Life | Life | Rule | Struggle | Worth |