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

William Cowper

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

Character | Knowledge | Wisdom |

Tyron Edwards

He is one of the noblest conquerors who carries on a successful warfare against his own appetites and passions, and has them under wise and full control.

Character | Control | Wise |

Tyron Edwards

Some of the best lessons we ever learn we learn from our mistakes and failures. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.

Character | Error | Future | Past | Success | Wisdom | Learn |

Horatio W. Dresser

What I am thinking and doing day by day is resistlessly shaping my future - a future in which there is no expiation except through my own better conduct. No one can save me. No one can live my life for me. If I am wise I shall begin today to build my own truer and better world from within.

Better | Character | Conduct | Day | Future | Life | Life | Thinking | Wise | World |

Dubner Magid, name for Rabbi Jacob ben wolf Krantz

The honor-seeker does not study wisdom to become wiser. Rather his goal is to show off how wise he is. This is an attribute of a fool.

Character | Honor | Study | Wisdom | Wise |

Euripedes NULL

Many are the natures of men, various their manners of living, yet a straight path is always the right one; and lessons deeply taught lead man to paths of righteousness; reverence, I say, is wisdom and by its grace transfigures - so that we seek virtue with a right judgment. From all of this springs honor bringing ageless glory into Man’s life. Oh, a mighty quest is the hunting out of virtue.

Character | Glory | Grace | Honor | Judgment | Life | Life | Man | Manners | Men | Reverence | Right | Righteousness | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Euripedes NULL

Everything that depends on necessity is its slave in wise men's eyes.

Character | Men | Necessity | Wise |

Dubner Magid, name for Rabbi Jacob ben wolf Krantz

It is a wise man’s good sense to be slow to anger, and his glory to pass over a transgression.

Anger | Character | Glory | Good | Man | Sense | Wise |

Tyron Edwards

Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, "I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction."

Affliction | Character | Comfort | Consolation | God | Man | Quiet | Sorrow | Sympathy | Wise | God |

Daniel Defoe, born Daniel Foe

The height of human wisdom is to bring our tempers down to our circumstances, and to make a calm within, under the weight of the greatest storm without.

Character | Circumstances | Wisdom |

Euripedes NULL

A tongue without reins, definance, unwisdom - their end is disaster. But the life of quiet gfood, the wisdom that accepts - these abaide unshaken, preserving, sustaining the houses of men.

Character | Life | Life | Men | Quiet | Wisdom |

Owen Feltham

Knowledge is the treasure of the mind, but discretion is the key to it, without which it is useless. The practical part of wisdom is the best.

Character | Discretion | Knowledge | Mind | Wisdom |

William Ewart Gladstone

To comprehend a man's life, it is necessary to know not merely what he does, but also what he purposely leaves undone. There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best.

Body | Character | Energy | Life | Life | Man | Wise | Work |

Owen Feltham

Praise has different effects, according to the mind it meets with; it makes a wise man modest, but a fool more arrogant, turning his weak brain giddy.

Character | Man | Mind | Praise | Wise |

Henry Fielding

As a great part of the uneasiness of matrimony arises from mere trifles, it would be wise in every young married man to enter into an agreement with his wife, that in all disputes of this kind the party who was most convinced they were right should always surrender the victory. By which means both would be more forward to give up the cause.

Cause | Character | Man | Matrimony | Means | Right | Surrender | Trifles | Wife | Wise |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

As a wise man in time of peace prepares for war.

Character | Man | Peace | Time | War | Wise |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"A Farewell To Arms"; that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.

Character | Fallacy | Men | Wisdom | Wise | Old |