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

Stuart Litvak and A. Wayne Senzee

A divine power, mystery, delight, love - and a host of other unquantifiables - are personal realities proven only by themselves, by experience. Even scientific terms such as randomness hint at something ultimately unprovable by strictly scientific means. The phenomena encompass the discipline, not vice versa.

Discipline | Experience | Love | Means | Mystery | Phenomena | Power | Wisdom | Vice |

James Kirke Paulding

Equality is one of the most consummate scoundrels that ever crept from the brain of a political juggler - a fellow who thrusts his hand into the pocket of honest industry or enterprising talent, and squanders their hard-earned profits on profligate idleness or indolent stupidity.

Equality | Idleness | Industry | Stupidity | Wisdom |

Raimon Panikkar, fully Raimon Panikkar-Alemany

To look for a purpose in Life outside Life itself amounts to killing Life. Reason is given by Life, not vice versa. Life is prior to meaning... Human life is joyful interrogation. Any answer is blasphemy.

Blasphemy | Life | Life | Meaning | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Wisdom | Vice |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The great inequality in manner of living, the extreme idleness of some, and the excessive labor of others, the easiness of exciting and gratifying our sensual appetites, the too exquisite foods of the wealthy which overheat and fill them with indigestion, and, on the other hand, the unwholesome food of the poor, often, bad as it is, insufficient for their needs, which induces them, when opportunity offers, to eat voraciously and overcharge their stomachs; all these, together with sitting up late, and excesses of every kind, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, mental exhaustion, the innumerable pains and anxieties inseparable from every condition of life, by which the mind of man is incessantly tormented; these are too fatal proofs that the greater part of our ills are our own making, and that we might have avoided them nearly all by adhering to that simple, uniform and solitary manner of life which nature prescribed.

Extreme | Idleness | Indigestion | Inequality | Labor | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Nature | Opportunity | Passion | Wisdom |

Terence, full Latin name Publius Terentius Afer NULL

Old age brings this one vice to mankind, that we all think too much of money.

Age | Mankind | Money | Old age | Wisdom | Think | Vice |

Lionel Trilling

This is the great vice of academicism that it is concerned with ideas rather than with thinking.

Ideas | Thinking | Wisdom | Vice |

James Baker, fully James Addison Baker, III

Politics drives diplomacy, not vice versa.

Diplomacy | Politics | Vice |

Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron

The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas.

Progress | Vice |

Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

Blessings | Capitalism | Vice |

W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Sensuality is the vice of young men and of old nations.

Men | Nations | Sensuality | Old | Vice |

Laurenti Magesa

The worst type of sin, in fact the only “mortal sin” which has enslaved man for the greater part of history, is the institutionalized sin. Under the institution, vice appears to be, or is actually turned into, virtue. Apathy toward evil is thus engendered; recognition of sin becomes totally effaced; sinful institutions become absolutized, almost idolized, and sin becomes absolutely moral.

Apathy | Evil | History | Man | Mortal | Sin | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

François Dominique Toussaint-L’Ouverture

I have never considered that when men have gained their liberty they have the right to live in idleness and create disorder.

Idleness | Liberty | Men | Right |

Baltasar Gracián

Just as virtue is its own reward, so is vice its own punishment.

Punishment | Reward | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

Bill Moyers

Good Presidents make good staffs, not vice versa.

Good | Vice |

Bhartrihari NULL

If a man be covetous, what further vice can he have?

Man | Vice |

Charles Caleb Colton

In an age remarkable for good reasoning and bad conduct, for sound rules and corrupt manners, when virtue fills our heads, but vice our hearts; when those who would fain persuade us that they are quite sure of heaven, appear in no greater hurry to go there than other folks, but put on the livery of the best master only to serve the worst; in an age when modesty herself is more ashamed of detection than delinquency; when independence of principle consists in having no principle on which to depend; and free thinking, not in thinking freely, but in being free from thinking; in an age when patriots will hold anything except their tongues; keep anything except their word; and lose nothing patiently except their character; to improve such an age must be difficult; to instruct it dangerous; and he stands no chance of amending it who cannot at the same time amuse it.

Age | Chance | Character | Conduct | Detection | Good | Heaven | Hurry | Manners | Modesty | Nothing | Sound | Thinking | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Vice |