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

Kung-chia Ta-shih

Those who speak ill of me are really my good friends. When, being slandered, I cherish neither enmity nor preference. There grows within me the power of love and humility, which is born of the Unborn.

Character | Good | Humility | Love | Power | Preference |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

We still have it in our power to rise above the fears, imagined and real, and to shoulder the great burdens which destiny has placed upon us, not for our country alone, but for the benefit of all the world.

Character | Destiny | Power | World |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

In the hour of death the only adequate consolation is that one has not evaded life, but has endured it. What a man shall accomplish or not accomplish, does not lie in his power to decide; he is not the One who will guide the world; he has only to obey... The point consists precisely in loving his neighbor, or, what is essentially the same thing, in living equally for every man. Every other point of view is a contentious one, however advantageous and comfortable and apparently significant this position may be... yet in the hour of death, he will confidently dare say to his soul: “I have done my best; whether I have accomplished anything, I do not know; whether I have helped anyone, I do not know; but that I have lived for them, that I do know, and I know it from the fact that they insulted me. And this is my consolation, that I shall not have to take the secret with me to the grave, that I, in order to have good and undisturbed and comfortable days in life, have denied my kinship to other men, kinship with the poor, in order to live in aristocratic seclusion, or with the distinguished, in order to live in secret obscurity.

Character | Consolation | Death | Good | Grave | Life | Life | Man | Men | Obscurity | Obscurity | Order | Position | Power | Seclusion | Soul | Will | World |

Abraham Lincoln

We hold the power and bear the responsibility.

Character | Power | Responsibility |

Alexander Maclaren

Ability involves responsibility. Power to its last particle is duty.

Ability | Character | Duty | Power | Responsibility |

Bruno Lessing, pseudonymn for Randolph Edgar Block

The superstition in which we were brought up never loses its power over us, even after we understand it.

Character | Power | Superstition | Understand |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison to the second. By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal. This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.

Acquaintance | Character | Difficulty | Law | Life | Life | Man | Mankind | Nature | Power | Will |

John Locke

The most precious of all possessions, is power over ourselves; power to withstand trial, to bear suffering, to front danger; power over pleasure and pain; power to follow convictions, however resisted by menace and scorn; the power of calm reliance in scenes of darkness an storms. He that has not a mastery over his inclinations; he that knows not how to resist the importunity of present pleasure or pain, for the sake of what reason tells him is fit to be done, wants the true principle of virtue and industry, and is in danger of never being good for anything.

Character | Convictions | Danger | Darkness | Good | Industry | Pain | Pleasure | Possessions | Power | Present | Reason | Suffering | Virtue | Virtue | Wants | Danger |

John Locke

All virtue lies in a power of denying our own desires where reason does not authorize them.

Character | Power | Reason | Virtue | Virtue |

John Locke

All the Actions, that we have any Idea of, reducing themselves, as has been said, to these two, viz. Thinking and Motion, so far as a Man has a power to think, or not to think; to move or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a Man Free. Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a Man’s power; wherever doing or not doing, will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind directing it, there he is not Free, though perhaps the Action may be voluntary.

Action | Character | Forbearance | Man | Mind | Power | Preference | Thinking | Will |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.

Authority | Beginning | Character | Courage | Custom | Little | Power | Time |

W. H. Murray, fully William Hutchinson Murray

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Boldness | Chance | Character | Decision | Events | Genius | Ideas | Ignorance | Initiative | Magic | Man | Power | Providence | Respect | Truth | Respect |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Other passions have objects to flatter the, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.

Ambition | Character | Envy | Luxury | Nothing | Pleasure | Power |

Mystical Script NULL

The sum and total of man’s ignorance lie in the misconception of the power that surround his identity. He must realize that though his intellect is but a grain in the sands of knowledge, yet hid in that grain is the essence of the Whole.

Character | Ignorance | Knowledge | Man | Power | Intellect |

Guiseppe Mazzini

Poetry is enthusiasm with wings of fire; it is the angel of high thoughts, that inspires us with the power of sacrifice.

Character | Enthusiasm | Poetry | Power | Sacrifice |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another’s than our own. Man can in nothing fix and conform himself to his mere necessity. Of pleasure, wealth and power he grasps at more than he can hold; his greediness is incapable of moderation.

Character | Man | Moderation | Necessity | Nothing | Pleasure | Power | Wealth | Think |

Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

Experience constantly proves that every man who has power is impelled to abuse it; he goes on till he is pulled up by some limits. Who would say; it! virtue even has need of limits.

Abuse | Character | Experience | Man | Need | Power | Virtue | Virtue |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. But yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, like Herillus the philosopher, who placed in it the sovereign good, and held that it was in its power to make us wise and content. That I do not believe, nor what others have said, that knowledge is the mother of all virtue, and all vice is produced by ignorance. If that is true, it is subject to a long interpretation.

Character | Despise | Enough | Evidence | Extreme | Good | Ignorance | Knowledge | Mother | Power | Stupidity | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Wise | Value | Vice |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

True freedom is to have power over oneself for everything.

Character | Freedom | Power |