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

Claude-Adrien Helvétius

There is but one man who can believe himself free from envy; and it is he who has never examined his own heart.

Character | Envy | Heart | Man |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

Words without action are the assassins of idealism.

Action | Character | Idealism | Words |

Zane Grey Orig. name Pearl Grey

To bear up under loss; to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief; to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close; to resist disease and evil men and base instincts; to hate hate and to love love; to go on when it would seem good to die; to look up with unquenchable faith in something ever more about to be - that is what any man can do, and be great.

Anger | Bitterness | Character | Defeat | Disease | Evil | Faith | Good | Grief | Hate | Love | Man | Men | Smile | Tears | Weakness |

Claude-Adrien Helvétius

By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.

Action | Character | Man | Mind |

Thomas Hobbes

To this war of every man, against every man, this is also consequent that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice, and injustice, are none of the faculties neither of the body, nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his sense, and passions. They are qualities, that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thing distinct; but only that to be every man’s, that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it.

Body | Character | Force | Fraud | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Law | Man | Men | Mind | Nothing | Power | Qualities | Right | Sense | Society | Solitude | War | World | Wrong |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

We are all tatooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.

Character | Imagination | Man | Reason |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What is the true test of character, unless it be its progressive development in the bustle and turmoil, in the action and reaction of daily life?

Action | Character | Life | Life | Turmoil |

Samuel "Sam" Hoffenstein

Real wealth is the soul in repose.

Character | Repose | Soul | Wealth |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

There is nothing more precious to a man than his will; there is nothing which he relinquishes with so much reluctance.

Character | Man | Nothing | Will |

Thomas Haliburton, fully Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pseudonym "Sam Slick"

A brave man is sometimes a desperado; but a bully is always a coward.

Character | Man |

Samson Raphael Hirsch

In general, one cannot judge the true extent of a person’s fortune by outward appearances. The little a righteous man has may be far better than the noisy abundance in which many lawless delight. The modest possessions of a righteous man make him much happier than the great fortunes of many evildoers about which so much ado is made in the world.

Abundance | Better | Character | Fortune | Little | Man | Possessions | World |

Josef Matthias Hauer

The man who listens is from the outset a spiritual being compared with the person who merely speaks, sees, and grasps. Hearing and taking in are spiritual activities: hearing the unchangeable, the untouchable, the incomprehensible, the constant, the eternal within the Melos. Only someone who listens can also recognize, interpret, think, speak, apprehend and comprehend.

Character | Eternal | Man | Wisdom |

Ralph A. Hayward

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to receive a great deal, you first have to give a great deal. If each individual will give of himself to whomever he can, wherever he can, in any way that he can, in the long run he will be compensated in the exact proportion he gives.

Action | Character | Individual | Receive | Will | Wisdom |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

The idle man stands outside of God’s plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity; are not to be found there.

Character | Dignity | God | Man | Plan | Respect | Self |

Henry Home, Lord Kames

A man of integrity will never listen to any plea against conscience.

Character | Conscience | Integrity | Man | Will |

Harriet Van Horne

The way a man speaks lays bare the texture of his mind, the goodness of his heart, the inner pain or the sweet serenity that are his companions in solitude.

Character | Heart | Man | Mind | Pain | Serenity | Solitude |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.

Character | Experience | Man |