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 P. Grier

The biggest gap in the world is the gap between the justice of a cause and the motives of the people pushing it.

Cause | Character | Justice | Motives | People | World |

Avraham Grodzinski

There is a great amount of deception in honor giving. Many people who give honor are really takers.

Character | Giving | Honor | People |

Avraham Grodzinski

A person who does not mix with other people will not know how to help others. Such a person lacks knowledge about the way people think, their wants and their desires. Even if he wants to help others, he will not know what is good for them. When he wants to comply with the wishes of others, he will confuse them with his own wishes. Because he lacks knowledge about other people, he will not be able to say what is appropriate and acceptable even if he tries. His obstacle is not a lack of love for his fellow man, but a lack of understanding of others.

Character | Good | Knowledge | Love | Man | People | Understanding | Wants | Will | Wishes | Obstacle |

Frank Harris

Strong people are made by opposition like kites that go up against the wind.

Character | Opposition | People |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable.

Character | Impatience | Men | People | Time | Unhappiness |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

Character | Government | Honor | People |

Sarah Grand, pseudonymn of Frances Elizabeth Bellenden Clarke McFall

Our opinion of people depends less upon what we see in them than in what they make us see in ourselves.

Character | Opinion | People |

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

Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, yet both actively working together.

Character | Difficulty | People |

Lynn Hill, aka Lynn Hill-Raffa

The purpose of my existence as I climb is to adapt my personal dimensions to the environment around me at each moment. I become an active player sharing some of the responsibility for my own destiny, achieving a heightened sense of awareness and seeing the direct result of my efforts; either I fall or I reach the top. But the meaning does not come from conquering the rock. Purpose comes from moving in harmony with nature, rather than destroying it or altering it for my immediate satisfaction. What gives life meaning is the fulfillment of directing energy in a way that brings a higher order to, and harmony with, the environment I live in... The ultimate meaning of our lives is relative to how much we have given to others. The ultimate meaning of our lives is connected with death... I would like to know that I have inspired people to go beyond self-limiting stereotypes to experience and nurture the true richness of their passions.

Awareness | Character | Death | Destiny | Energy | Existence | Experience | Fulfillment | Harmony | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Self | Sense | Awareness |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Most people think dramatically, not quantitatively.

Character | People | Think |

Ellen Goodman

It is one thing when business is interested in young people as students. Quite another when they are interested in students as consumers. It is one thing when the marketplace supports the schools. Quite another when the schools become a marketplace.

Business | Character | People | Business |

John P. Grier

Prejudices are the principles of people we dislike.

Character | People | Principles |

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

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities. No wonder then, that in this prudent country most people are so shy of praising anything.

Character | People | Wonder |

William James

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

Character | Consciousness | Habit | Little | Man | People | Soul |

E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe

What people say behind your back is your standing in the community in which you live.

Character | People |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The human species... capacity for good is infinite, since they can, they desire, make room within themselves for divine Reality. But at the same time their capacity for evil is, not indeed infinite (since evil is always ultimately self-destructive and therefore temporary), but uniquely great. Hell is total separation from God, and the devil is the will to that separation... To be diabolic on the grand scale, one must, like Milton’s Satan, exhibit in a high degree all the moral virtues, except only charity and wisdom.

Capacity | Character | Charity | Desire | Devil | Evil | God | Good | Hell | Reality | Satan | Self | Time | Will | Wisdom |

David Hume

The spirit of the people must frequently be roused, in order to curb the ambition of the court; and the dread of rousing this spirit must be employed to prevent that ambition. Nothing so effectual to this purpose as the liberty of the press; by which all the learning, wit, and genius of the nation, may be employed on the side of freedom, and every one be animated to its defense.

Ambition | Character | Defense | Dread | Freedom | Genius | Learning | Liberty | Nothing | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Spirit | Wit | Ambition |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

If you had been looking for happiness in people and events, you discovered that it is not there. If you look to outer circumstances for your satisfaction cues, you will stay on an emotion seesaw... True joy is actually part of your nature... Events merely give us an excuse to feel it.

Character | Circumstances | Events | Joy | Nature | People | Will | Happiness |

William James

In civilized life... it has at last become possible for large numbers of people to pass from the cradle to the grave without ever having had a pang of genuine fear. Man of us need an attack of mental disease to teach us the meaning of the word. Hence the possibility of so much blindly optimistic philosophy and religion.

Character | Disease | Fear | Grave | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Need | People | Philosophy | Religion | Teach |