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 Barrymore

I have always been subconsciously embarrassed by the “function” of Christmas and New Years - the spirit of “loving kindness,” that is presumed to come to a head like a boil once a year, when it has been magnificently concealed up to that moment!

Kindness | Spirit | Wisdom |

James Ford Bell

Fear is an insidious virus. Given a breeding place in our minds, it will permeate the whole body of our work; it will eat away our spirit and block the forward path of our endeavors. Fear is the greatest enemy of progress... Fear is met and destroyed with courage.

Body | Courage | Enemy | Fear | Progress | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Work |

Bible or The Bible or Holy Bible NULL

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Pride | Spirit | Wisdom |

Elazar ben Azariah, alt. spelling Eleazar

Some of a man's praise may be sung in his presence, all of it in his absence.

Absence | Man | Praise | Wisdom |

Hayim Nahim Bialik, also Chaim or Haim

Language is but spirit crystallized and substantiated.

Language | Spirit | Wisdom |

Bertha Bailey

The thought that is beautiful is the thought to cherish. The word that is beautiful is worthy to ensure. The act that is beautiful is eternally and always true and right. Only be aware that your appreciation of beauty is just and true; and to that end, I urge you to live intimately with beauty of the highest type, until it has become a part of you , until you have within you that fineness, that order, that calm, which puts you in tune with the finest things of the universe, and which links you with that spirit that is the enduring life of the world.

Appreciation | Beauty | Life | Life | Order | Right | Spirit | Thought | Universe | Wisdom | World | Appreciation | Beauty | Thought |

L. S. Barksdale

Praise is especially destructive to children, for they readily grasp the fact that praise is based on identification with their actions. Thus, they automatically blame themselves every time they make a mistake. This is the beginning of their lack of Self-Esteem.

Beginning | Blame | Children | Esteem | Mistake | Praise | Self | Self-esteem | Time | Wisdom |

John Christian Bovee

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into congenial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

Children | Kindness | Life | Life | Praise | Wisdom | Words | Child |

Frederika Bremer

People have generally three epochs in their confidence in man. In the first they believe him to be everything that is good, and they are lavish with their friendship and confidence. In the next, they have had experience, which has smitten down their confidence, and they; then have to be careful not to mistrust every one, and to put the worst construction upon everything. Later in life, they learn that the greater number of men have much; more good in them than bad, and that even when there is cause to blame, there is more reason to pity than condemn; and then a spirit of confidence again awakens within them.

Blame | Cause | Confidence | Experience | Good | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mistrust | People | Pity | Reason | Spirit | Wisdom | Friendship | Learn |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a congenial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

Children | Kindness | Life | Life | Praise | Wisdom | Words | Child |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel.

Contempt | Good | Little | Man | Praise | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.

Merit | Politics | Position | Wisdom |

Phillips Brooks

The best advisers, helpers and friends, always are not those who tell us how to act in special cases, but who give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is

Action | Desire | Right | Spirit | Wisdom |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.

Reality | Spirit | Wisdom |

Natalie Cole

Just as we can dig a channel to control the direction of a stream, we can control the direction of our children's activities through praise and recognition.

Children | Control | Praise | Wisdom |

Anne Conway

In every visible Creature there is a Body and a Spirit... or, more Active and more Passive Principle, which may fitly be termed Male and Female, by reason of that Analogy a Husband hath with his Wife. For as the ordinary Generation of Men requires a Conjunction and Co-operation of Male and Female; so also all Generations and Productions whatsoever they be, require an Union, and conformable Operation of those Two Principles, to wit, Spirit and Body; but the Spirit is an Eye or Light beholding its own proper Image, and the Body is a Tenebrosity or Darkness receiving that Image, when the Spirit looks thereinto, as when one sees himself in a Looking-Glass; for certainly he cannot so behold himself in the Transparent Air, nor in any Diaphanous Body, because the reflexion of an Image requires a certain opacity or darkness, which we call a Body: Yet to be a Body is not an Essential property of any Thing; as neither is it a Property of any Thing to be dark; for nothing is so dark that nothing else, neither differs any thing from a Spirit, but in that it is more dark; therefore by how much the thicker and grosser it is become, so much the more remote it is from the degree of Spirit, so that this distinction is only modal and gradual, not essential or substantial.

Body | Darkness | Distinction | Husband | Light | Looks | Men | Nothing | Principles | Property | Reason | Spirit | Wife | Wisdom | Wit |