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

Berthold Auerbach

Gratitude is a soil on which joy thrives.

Character | Gratitude | Joy |

Dwight Douglas Andrews

Real joy seems dissonant from the human character in its present condition; and if it be felt, it must come from a higher region, for the world is shadowed by sorrow; thorns array the ground; the very clouds, while they weep fertility on our mountains, seem also to shed a tear on man’s grave who departs, unlike the beauties of summer, to return no more; who fades unlike the sons of the forest, which another summer beholds new clothed, when he is unclothed and forgotten.

Character | Grave | Joy | Man | Present | Sorrow | World |

Walter Bagehot

The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Character | Life | Life | People | Pleasure | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others.

Character | Pleasure |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

Who ever lives looking for pleasure only, his senses uncontrolled, immoderate in his enjoyments, idle and weak, the tempter will certainly overcome him, as the wind blows down a weak tree.

Character | Pleasure | Will |

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.

Character | Heart | Joy | Mind |

Samuel Egerton Brydges

Duty by habit is to pleasure turned.

Character | Duty | Habit | Pleasure |

William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker

What a pleasure life would be to live if everybody would try to do only half of what he expects others to do.

Character | Life | Life | Pleasure |

Abel Bonnard

Not only is there a right to be happy, there is a duty to be happy. So much sadness exists in the world that we are all under obligation to contribute as much joy as lies within our powers.

Character | Duty | Happy | Joy | Obligation | Right | Sadness | World |

Edward William Bok

Man cannot live by bread alone. The making of money, the accumulation of material power, is not all there is to living. Life is something more than these, and the man who misses this truth misses the greatest joy and satisfaction that can come into his life - service for others.

Character | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Money | Power | Service | Truth |

William Blake

If a fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

Character | Folly | Wise |

Cassius, fully Gaius Cassius Longinus NULL

To live a life of pleasure is impossible without living a life of virtue and justice.

Character | Justice | Life | Life | Pleasure | Virtue | Virtue |

Yehuda Leib Chasman

It is impossible to remove all desires. But we have the ability to channel our desires from physical and material pleasures to spiritual endeavors... Someone who finds fulfillment in spiritual matters is not being deprived of pleasure. Rather he is gaining more pleasure than is possible in material matters.

Ability | Fulfillment | Pleasure |