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

Peyton Conway March

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life - happiness, freedom and peace of mind - are always attained by giving them to someone else.

Freedom | Giving | Law | Life | Life | Mind | Nature | Peace |

Plato NULL

Education has two branches - one of gymnastic, which is concerned with the body, and the other of music, which is designed for the improvement of the soul. And gymnastic has also two branches - dancing and wrestling; and one sort of dancing imitates muscial recitation, and aims at preserving dignity and freedom, the other aims at producing health, agility, and beauty in the limbs and parts of the body, giving the proper flexion and extension to each of them, a harmonious motion being diffused everywhere, and forming suitabile accompaniment to the dance.

Aims | Beauty | Body | Dignity | Education | Freedom | Giving | Health | Improvement | Music | Soul | Beauty |

Preston Bradley

The world has a way of giving what is demanded of it. If you are frightened and look for failure and poverty, you will get them, no matter how hard you may try to succeed. Lack of faith in yourself, in what life will do for you, cuts you off from the good things of the world. Expect victory and you make victory. Nowhere is this truer than in business life, where bravery and faith bring both material and spiritual rewards.

Bravery | Business | Failure | Faith | Giving | Good | Life | Life | Poverty | Will | World | Failure | Business |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

Giving | Hate | Man |

Saint Francis de Sales NULL

The soul that flows out into God does not die; death is alien to what is submerged in life. The soul is alive, but not to itself. Stars are ever giving light, but they do not shine in the daytime; the sun shines in them, and they are hidden away in the sun’s rays. So it is with the soul; still alive, but now its life is bound up with God; or rather, it is God who lives in it.

Death | Giving | God | Life | Life | Light | Soul | God |

Solon NULL

In giving advice, seek to help, not to please.

Advice | Giving |

Socrates NULL

Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. It is well worth while to learn how to win the heart of a man the right way... Excite them by your civilities, and show them that you desire nothing more than their satisfaction; oblige with all your soul that friend who has made you a present of his own.

Desire | Friend | Giving | Heart | Love | Man | Nothing | Present | Right | Soul | Worth | Friends | Learn |

Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life’s parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it reserves it by giving it the abolute dimension – “As unto himself eternity changes him at last.” Death does away with time.

Age | Death | Destiny | Eternity | Giving | Life | Life | Old age | Time | Old |

T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now history has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, guides us by vanities. Think now she gives when our attention is distracted and what she gives, gives with such supple confusions that the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late what’s not believed in, or if still believed, in memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with till the refusal propagates a fear. Think neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

Attention | Courage | Cunning | Fear | Forgiveness | Giving | History | Knowledge | Memory | Tears | Thought | Think | Thought |

Thomas Fuller

Give freely to him that deserveth well and asketh nothing: and that is a way of giving to thyself.

Giving | Nothing |

Thomas Wilson

Friendship is to be purchased only by friendship. A man may have authority over others, but he can never have their heart but by giving his own.

Authority | Giving | Heart | Man |

Thomas Moore

The soul is more interested in particulars than in generalities. That is true of personal identity as well. Identifying with a group or a syndrome or a diagnosis is giving in to an abstraction. Soul provides a strong sense of individuality - personal destiny, special influences and background, and unique stories. In the face of overwhelming need for both emergency and chronic care, the mental health system labels people schizophrenics, alcoholics, and survivors so that it can bring some order to the chaos of life at home and on the street, but each person has a special story to tell, no matter how many common themes it contains.

Care | Destiny | Giving | Health | Individuality | Life | Life | Need | Order | People | Sense | Soul | Story | System | Unique |

Zelig Pliskin

The person who feels despair and discouragement is asking the wrong question. He asks what the world is giving him. As soon as he changes his question to what is the good that he can do, he will always be able to find an answer.

Despair | Giving | Good | Question | Will | World | Wrong |

Colin Powell, fully Colin Luther Powell

Too often we act - ask our schools to be truant officers, our teachers to be truant officers, because we're giving them children who have, you know, they're not ready to learn. And if they're not ready to learn by the third grade, they know they're behind.

Children | Giving | Learn |