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

John Armstrong

Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul, is the best gift of heaven; a happiness that, even above the smiles and frowns of fate, exalts great Nature’s favorites; a wealth that ne’er encumbers, nor can be transferr’d.

Beauty | Character | Fate | Heaven | Nature | Soul | Strength | Virtue | Virtue | Wealth | Beauty | Happiness |

Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren

Illusion and self-deception stand in the way of an honest, penetrating and fearless self-appraisal. Though it would appear that we have access to the innermost core of our individual being, and that there is nothing in the world with which we are on more intimate terms than our own self, the self remains an elusive object of knowledge and understanding.

Character | Illusion | Individual | Knowledge | Nothing | Object | Self | Self-deception | Understanding | World |

Isaac Abravanel, fully Don Itshak ben Yehouda Abravanel

Success depends on faith and good deeds... not upon the knowledge of the proofs which lead to them.

Character | Deeds | Faith | Good | Knowledge | Success |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go.

Arrogance | Character | Prosperity | Receive | Wealth |

Jacob Bohme, or Jacob Behmen or Jakob Böhme

Spiritual knowledge cannot be communicated from one intellect to another, but must be sought for in the spirit of God.

Character | God | Knowledge | Spirit | Intellect |

Khajah Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Abu Ismaïl Abdullah ibn Abi-Mansour Mohammad or Khajah Abdullah Ansari of Herat

Desire for knowledge is the path of honor: desire for wealth is the path of dishonor. Wealth is the chain that slaves wear; knowledge the kingly crown.

Character | Desire | Dishonor | Honor | Knowledge | Wealth |

Christian Nestell Bovee

The knowledge beyond all other knowledge is the knowledge how to excuse.

Character | Knowledge |

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

Through zeal knowledge is gotten, through lack of zeal knowledge is lost; let a man who knows this double path of gain and loss thus place himself that knowledge may grow.

Character | Knowledge | Man | Zeal | Loss |

Hugh Blair

Willingness to be taught what we do not know, is the sure pledge of growth both in knowledge and wisdom.

Character | Growth | Knowledge | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Hope is the best part of our riches. What sufficeth it that we have the wealth of the Indies in our pockets, if we have not the hope of heaven in our souls?

Character | Heaven | Hope | Riches | Wealth |

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Lady Blessington, born Margaret Power

There is no knowledge for which so great a price is paid as a knowledge of the world; and no one ever became an adept in it except at the expense of a hardened or a wounded heart.

Character | Heart | Knowledge | Price | World |

Jean de La Bruyère

False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.

Character | Deceit | Light | Man | Modesty | Reputation | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best a specious an ingenious sort of idleness; and the knowledge we acquire by it only a credible kind of ignorance, nothing more.

Better | Character | Idleness | Ignorance | Knowledge | Men | Nothing | Study |

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

I am not collecting my knowledge from letters and books, but I have it within my own Self; because heaven and earth with all their inhabitants, and moreover God himself, is in man.

Books | Character | Earth | God | Heaven | Knowledge | Man | Self | God |