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

Menachem Taryash

The life of a person who demands and pursues approval is full of pain and suffering. Even if he does receive a large amount of approval, he will still demand more. We can say with certainty that not everyone will honor him as much as he would like and he will cause himself much self-imposed misery.

Cause | Character | Honor | Life | Life | Pain | Receive | Self | Suffering | Will | Approval |

Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

The envious man is in pain upon all occasions which ought to give him pleasure. The relish of his life is inverted; and the objects which administer the highest satisfaction to those who are exempt from this passion give the quickest pangs to persons who are subject to it. All the perfections of their fellow creatures are odious. Youth, beauty, valor and wisdom are provocations of their displeasure. What a wretched and apostate state is this! to be offended with excellence, and to hate a man because we approve him!

Beauty | Character | Excellence | Hate | Life | Life | Man | Pain | Passion | Pleasure | Valor | Valor | Wisdom | Youth |

Menachem Taryash

Unless you learn to control your desires for things you lack, your entire life will be full of pain and suffering. Even an extremely wealthy person will always find some new thing to desire.

Character | Control | Desire | Life | Life | Pain | Suffering | Will | Learn |

Avraham Yellin

When looking back at your past suffering, feel joy. They have already benefited you by atoning for your misdeeds and at present you no longer feel pain from those past misfortunes.

Character | Joy | Pain | Past | Present | Suffering |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Pain | Power | Wisdom |

Ralph Venning

Virtue and vice are both prophets; the first, of certain good; the second, of pain or else of penitence.

Character | Good | Pain | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

Samuel Adler

Only those who have suffered and endured greatly have achieved greatly... Man has ever risen nearer to God by the alter-stairs of pain and sorrow.

God | Man | Pain | Sorrow | Wisdom | God |

R. H. Blyth, fully Reginald Horace Blyth

We are to live with life and die with death, not separated from them. The problem of suffering is insoluble, because we think of ourselves as apart from pain and death, in opposition to them. We can be free from change only by changing with it.

Change | Death | Life | Life | Opposition | Pain | Suffering | Wisdom | Think |

Walter Bagehot

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Human nature | Nature | Pain | Wisdom |

J. E. Boodin

There is the laughter which is born out of the pure joy of living, the spontaneous expression of health and energy - the secret laughter of the child. This is a gift of God. There is the warm laughter of the kindly soul which heartens the discouraged, gives health to the sick and comfort to the dying... There is, above all, the laughter that comes from the eternal joy of creation, the joy of making the world new, the joy of expressing the inner riches of the soul - laughter that triumphs over pain and hardship in the passion for an enduring ideal, the joy of bringing the light of happiness, of truth and beauty into a dark world. This is divine laughter par excellence.

Beauty | Comfort | Energy | Eternal | Excellence | God | Health | Joy | Laughter | Light | Pain | Passion | Riches | Soul | Truth | Wisdom | World | Riches | Hardship | Beauty |

Christian Nestell Bovee

We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real.

Children | Pain | Wisdom | Learn |

Samuel Butler

Every new idea has something of the pain and peril of childbirth about it; ideas are just as mortal and just as immortal as organized beings are.

Ideas | Mortal | Pain | Peril | Wisdom |

Raymond Dart, fully Raymond Arthur Dart

The personal issue is whether the things we are doing day by day are done in a conscious and balanced way or are part of a pain ridden struggle. If yours be the latter method, stop!

Day | Method | Pain | Struggle | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

O Youth: Do you know that yours is not the first generation to yearn for a life of beauty and freedom? Do you know that all your ancestors felt as you do - and fell victim to trouble and hatred? Do you know, also, that your fervent wishes can only find fulfillment if you succeed in attaining love and understanding of men, and animals, and plants, and stars, so that every joy becomes your joy and every pain your pain? Open your eyes, your heart, your hands, and avoid the poison your forebears so greedily sucked in from History. Then will all the earth be your fatherland, and all your work and effort spread forth blessings.

Beauty | Blessings | Earth | Effort | Freedom | Fulfillment | Heart | History | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Men | Pain | Understanding | Will | Wisdom | Wishes | Work | Youth | Trouble | Beauty | Victim |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with true greatness, by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good.

Good | Greatness | Pain | Rest | Wisdom | World | Happiness |