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

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The simplest explanation is not always the right one, truth is very often not simple.

Character | Right | Truth |

E. M. Forster, fully Edward Morgan Forster

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

Character | Life | Life | People | Trust |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

A small minority are enabled... to find happiness along the path of love; but far-reaching mental transformations of the erotic function are necessary before this is possible. These people make themselves independent of their object’s acquiescence by transferring the main value from the fact of being loved to their own act of loving; they protect themselves against loss of it by attaching their love not to individual objects but to all men equally, and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by turning away from its sexual aim and modifying the instinct which they induce in themselves by this process - an unchangeable, undeviating, tender attitude - has little superficial likeness to the stormy vicissitudes of genital love, from which it is nevertheless derived.

Character | Individual | Instinct | Little | Love | Men | Object | People | Loss | Vicissitudes | Happiness | Value |

Henry Ford

We now know that anything which is economically right is also morally right; there can be no conflict between good economics and good morals.

Character | Economics | Good | Right | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Most people work for the greater part of their time for a mere living; and the little freedom which remains to them so troubles them that they use every means of getting rid of it.

Character | Freedom | Little | Means | People | Time | Troubles | Work |

Monica Furlong

The best arguments in favor of marriage and family life are not that they promote happiness and reduce loneliness, though at their best they do these things, but that they create a situation in which facing the truth about ourselves - our self-deceiving, touchy, vain, inflated selves - becomes more difficult to avoid than it is anywhere else.

Character | Family | Life | Life | Loneliness | Marriage | Self | Truth | Happiness |

Friedrich Gentz, aka Friedrich von Gentz

Two principles govern the moral and intellectual world. One is perpetual progress, the other the necessary limitations to that progress. If the former alone prevailed, there would be nothing steadfast and durable on earth, and the whole of social life would be the sport of winds and waves. If the alter had exclusive sway, or even if it obtained a mischievous preponderancy, every thing would petrify or rot. The best ages of the world are those in which these two principles are the most equally balanced. In such ages every enlightened man ought to adopt both principles, and with one hand develop what he can, with the other restrain and uphold what he ought.

Character | Earth | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Principles | Progress | World | Govern |

Madame Émile de Girardin, Delphine de Girardin, née Gay

Ennui is the rust of the mind born of idleness. It is unused tools that corrode.

Character | Ennui | Idleness | Mind |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Simplicity is the straightforwardness of a soul which refuses itself any reaction with regard to itself or its deeds. This virtue differs from and surpasses sincerity. We see many people who are sincere without being simple. They do not wish to be taken for other than what they are; but they are always fearing lest they should be taken for what they are not.

Character | Deeds | People | Regard | Simplicity | Sincerity | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The dream, which fulfills its wishes by following the short regressive path, has thereby simply preserved for us a specimen of the primary method of operation of the psychic apparatus, which has been abandoned as inappropriate. What once prevailed in the waking state, when our psychic life was still young and inefficient, seems to have been banished into our nocturnal life; just as we still find in the nursery those discarded primitive weapons of adult humanity, the bow and arrow.

Character | Humanity | Life | Life | Method | Weapons | Wishes | Following |

William Feather

The sweaty players in the game of life always have more fun than the supercilious spectators.

Character | Fun | Life | Life |

Owen Feltham

The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These for the most part be summed in these two - common sense and perseverance.

Character | Common Sense | Life | Life | Means | Perseverance | Qualities | Sense |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He who seizes on the moment, he is the right man.

Character | Man | Right |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

Character | People | Wisdom |

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 |