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

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

The grand difficulty is to feel the reality of both worlds, so as to give each its due place in our thoughts and feelings, to keep our mind’s eye and our heart’s eye ever fixed on the land of promise, without looking away from the road along which we are to travel toward it.

Character | Difficulty | Feelings | Heart | Land | Mind | Promise | Reality |

Saint Jerome, aka Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymous, Hierom or Jerom NULL

No one loves to tell of scandal except to him who loves to hear it. Learn, then, to rebuke and check the detracting tongue by showing that you do not listen to it with pleasure.

Character | Pleasure | Rebuke | Scandal |

George Horne

He who seldom thinks of heaven is not likely to get thither; as the only way to hit the ark is to keep the eye fixed upon it.

Character | Heaven |

William James

Nature... is frugal in her operations and will not be at the expense of a particular instinct to give us that knowledge which experience and habit will soon produce. Reproduced sights and contacts tied together with the present sensation in the unity of a thing with a name, these are complex objective stuff out of which my actually perceived table is made. Infants must go through a long education of the eye and ear before they can perceive the realities which adults perceive. Every perception is an acquired perception.

Character | Education | Experience | Habit | Instinct | Knowledge | Nature | Perception | Present | Unity | Will |

Washington Irving

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

Age | Character | Temper |

Khati I NULL

The tongue of a man is his weapon, and speech is mightier than fighting.

Character | Fighting | Man | Speech |

Roger L'Estrange, fully Sir Roger L'Estrange

Much tongue and much judgment seldom go together.

Character | Judgment |

John Locke

Nothing being so beautiful to the eye as truth is to the mind; nothing so deformed and irreconcilable to the understanding as a lie.

Character | Mind | Nothing | Truth | Understanding |

Celia Luce

A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything out of focus. Hold it at a proper viewing distance and it can be examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway to eternity.

Character | Eternity | Focus | Wisdom | World | Trouble |

Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

No one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it, but live in innocence and let the world talk.

Attention | Character | Innocence | Safe | Slander | World |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so also the smallest affairs disturb us most.

Character |

Jane Porter

A cheerful temper spreads like the dawn, and all vapors disperse before it. Even the tear dries on the cheek, and the sigh sinks away half-breathed when the eye of benignity beams upon the unhappy.

Character | Dawn | Temper |

Plotinus NULL

The pinions of your soul will have power to still the untamed body. The creature will yield only to watchful, strenuous constancy of habit. Purify your soul from all undue hope and fear about earthly things, mortify the body, deny self - affections as well as appetites - and the inner eye will begin to exercise its clear and solemn vision.

Body | Character | Constancy | Fear | Habit | Hope | Power | Self | Soul | Vision | Will |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.

Character | Innocence | Nothing |

Francis Quarles

If thy words be too luxuriant, confine them, lest they confide thee; he that thinks he never can speak enough may easily speak too much. A full tongue and an empty brain are seldom parted.

Character | Enough | Words |

Francis Quarles

A fool's heart is in his tongue; but a wise man's tongue is in his heart.

Character | Heart | Man | Wise |