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

George Santayana

If perfection is, as it should be, the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground of the moral dignity of beauty.

Beauty | Dignity | Justification | Perfection | Understand |

Helen Hayes

The truth [is] that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted in eternity.

Dignity | Eternity | Important | Love | Story | Truth |

Emil Brunner, fully Heinrich Emil Brunner

In the Kingdom of God there are no claims, but only love, which, as something which cannot be coordinated into a given structure, knows no calculations. All claimfulness is overcome because it is realized that complete dependence and freedom, human dignity and divine grace, are not opposites as the autonomous self-centered man supposes.

Dependence | Dignity | Freedom | God | Grace | Love | Man | Self | God |

George Santayana

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

Capacity | Despise | Dignity | Man |

Immanuel Kant

A lie is the abandonment and, as it were, the annihilation of the dignity of man.

Dignity | Man |

Immanuel Kant

Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself: and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.

Absolute | Crime | Dignity | Man | Means | Purpose | Purpose |

Jeremy Bentham

The word “independence” is united to the accessory ideas of dignity and virtue. The word “dependence” is united to the ideas of inferiority and corruption.

Corruption | Dependence | Dignity | Ideas | Inferiority | Virtue | Virtue |

Jawaharlal Nehru

There is only one thing that remains to us, that cannot be taken away: to act with courage and dignity and to stick to the ideals that have given meaning to life.

Courage | Dignity | Ideals | Life | Life | Meaning |

John Ruskin

The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to is dependency of language and expression.

Dignity | Language | Praise |

John Ruskin

A man is known to his dog by the smell, to his tailor by the coat, to his friend by the smile; each of these know him, but how little or how much depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man is known only to God.

Dignity | Friend | God | Intelligence | Little | Man | Smile |

Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

We ought to regard amiability as the quality of woman, dignity that of man.

Dignity | Man | Regard | Woman |

Margaret Thatcher, fully Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, née Roberts

We need a free economy not only for the renewed material prosperity it will bring, but because it is indispensable to individual freedom, human dignity and to a more just, more honest society.

Dignity | Freedom | Indispensable | Individual | Need | Prosperity | Society | Will |

Marshall Field

Twelve Things to Remember: The value of time. The success of perseverance. The pleasure of working. The dignity of simplicity. The worth of character. The power of kindness. The influence of example. The obligation of duty. The wisdom of economy. The virtue of patience. The improvement of talent. The joy of originating.

Character | Dignity | Duty | Example | Improvement | Influence | Joy | Kindness | Obligation | Patience | Perseverance | Pleasure | Power | Simplicity | Success | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Worth | Value |

Philip Massinger

True dignity is never gained by place, and never lost when honors are withdrawn.

Dignity |

Plato NULL

Education has two branches - one of gymnastic, which is concerned with the body, and the other of music, which is designed for the improvement of the soul. And gymnastic has also two branches - dancing and wrestling; and one sort of dancing imitates muscial recitation, and aims at preserving dignity and freedom, the other aims at producing health, agility, and beauty in the limbs and parts of the body, giving the proper flexion and extension to each of them, a harmonious motion being diffused everywhere, and forming suitabile accompaniment to the dance.

Aims | Beauty | Body | Dignity | Education | Freedom | Giving | Health | Improvement | Music | Soul | Beauty |

Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

Let us not accept violence as the way of peace. Let us instead begin by respecting true freedom: the resulting peace will be able to satisfy the world’s expectations, for it will be a peace built on justice, a peace founded on the incomparable dignity of the free human being.

Dignity | Freedom | Justice | Peace | Will | World |

Polybius NULL

The study of history is in the truest sense an education and a training for political life... The most instructive, or rather the only, method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.

Dignity | Education | Fortune | History | Learning | Life | Life | Method | Sense | Study | Training | Vicissitudes |