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

Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle

The man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.

Character | Difficulty | Man |

Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself.

Character | Man |

Tyron Edwards

Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world.

Character | God | Morality | Piety | Religion | Spirit | World |

Madame Deluzy, Luzy Dorothee

Heartlessness and fascination, in about equal quantities, constitute the receipt for forming the character of coquette.

Character |

Albert Einstein

Exaggerated respect for athletics, an excess of coarse impressions brought about by the technical discoveries of recent years, the increased severity of the struggle for existence due to the economic crisis, the brutalization of political life: all these factors are hostile to the ripening of the character and the desire for real culture, and stamp our age as barbarous, materialistic and superficial.

Age | Athletics | Character | Culture | Desire | Excess | Existence | Life | Life | Respect | Struggle | Respect |

Tyron Edwards

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.

Action | Character | Destiny | Wisdom |

Tyron Edwards

To murder character is as truly a crime as to murder the body: the tongue of the slanderer is brother to the dagger of the assassin.

Body | Character | Crime | Murder | Murder |

J. L. M. Curry, fully Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry

A state to prosper, must be built on foundations of moral character, and, this character is the principal element of its strength, and the only guaranty of its permanence and prosperity.

Character | Prosperity | Strength |

Ilya Ehrenburg, fully Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg

Knowledge has outstripped character development, and the young today are given an education rather than an upbringing.

Character | Education | Knowledge |

Tyron Edwards

The influences of little things are as real, and as constantly about us, as the air we breathe or the light by which we see. These are the small - the often invisible - the almost unthought of strands, which are inweaving and twisting by millions, to bind us to character - to good or evil here, and to heaven or hell hereafter.

Character | Evil | Good | Heaven | Hell | Light | Little |

John Clayton Gifford

One man can completely change the character of a country, and the industry of its people, but dropping a single seed in fertile soil.

Change | Character | Industry | Man | People |

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

True piety hath in it nothing weak, nothing sad, nothing constrained. It enlarges the heart; it is simple, free and attractive.

Character | Heart | Nothing | Piety |

Benjamin Franklin

Education begins with life. Before we are aware the foundations of character are laid, and subsequent teaching avails but little to remove or alter them... If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Character | Education | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Man |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing serves better to illustrate a man’s character than the things which he finds ridiculous. the ridiculous arises from a moral contrast which is innocently placed before the senses. The sensual man will often laugh when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it may be that moves him, he will always reveal the fact that he is pleased with himself.

Better | Character | Contrast | Man | Nothing | Will |

Henry Fielding

Though we may sometimes unintentionally bestow our beneficence on the unworthy, it does not take from the merit of the act. For charity doth not adopt the vices of its objects.

Character | Charity | Merit |

James T. Farrell, fully James Thomas Farrell

When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own.

Character | Man | Reading |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Confronted by outstanding merit in another, there is no way of saving one's ego except by love.

Character | Ego | Love | Merit |

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

Our piety must be weak and imperfect if it do not conquer our fear of death.

Character | Death | Fear | Piety |