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

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

Friendship is held to be the severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to family and clan, whose blood is in our own veins. Love between man and woman is founded on the mating instinct and is not free from desire and self-seeking. But to have a friend, and to be true under any and all trials, is the mark of a man!

Character | Desire | Family | Friend | Instinct | Love | Man | Self | Trials | Woman |

Esteban Echevernia

Morality regulates the acts of man as a private individual; honor, his acts as a public man.

Character | Honor | Individual | Man | Morality | Public |

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 |

Jeff Donnell, born Jean Marie Donnell

The man who follows the crowd will never be followed by a crowd.

Character | Man | Will |

Owen Feltham

Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sing of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer.

Character | Ignorance | Man | Study | Torture |

J. Paul Getty, fully Jean Paul Getty

There are one hundred men seeking security to one able man who is willing to risk his fortune.

Character | Fortune | Man | Men | Risk | Security |

John Clayton Gifford

One man can completely change the character of a country, and the industry of its people, but dropping a single seed in fertile soil.

Change | Character | Industry | Man | People |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Forget not that the man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts is silence, and find his reward in the; exercise of them, will generally find himself badly off.

Character | Man | Reward | Silence | Will | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.

Aims | Character | Labor | Man | Men | Respect | Wisdom | Wishes | World | Respect | Understand |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It seems not to be true that there is a power in the universe, which watches over the well-being of every individual with parental care and brings all his concerns to a happy ending. On the contrary, the destinies of man are incompatible with a universal principle of benevolence or with - what is to some degree contradictory - a universal principle of justice... Dark, unfeeling, and unloving powers determine human destiny; the system of rewards and punishments, which according to religion, governs the world, seems to have no existence.

Benevolence | Care | Character | Destiny | Existence | Happy | Individual | Justice | Man | Power | Religion | System | Universe | World |

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 |

Benjamin Franklin

Education begins with life. Before we are aware the foundations of character are laid, and subsequent teaching avails but little to remove or alter them... If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Character | Education | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Man |

Benjamin Franklin

In dealings between man and man, truth, sincerity and integrity are of the utmost importance to the felicity of life.

Character | Integrity | Life | Life | Man | Sincerity | Truth |

Owen Feltham

No man can expect to find a friend without faults; nor can he propose himself to be so to another. Without reciprocal mildness and temperance there can be no continuance of friendship. Every man will have something to do for his friend, and something to bear with in him. The sober man only can do the first; and for the latter, patience is requisite. It is better for a man to depend on himself than to be annoyed with either a madman or a fool.

Better | Character | Friend | Man | Patience | Will |

Owen Feltham

Fear, if it be not immoderate, puts a guard about us that does watch and defend us; but credulity keeps us naked, and lays us open to all the sly assaults of ill-intending men: it was a virtue when man was in his innocence; but since his fall, it abuses those that own it.

Character | Fear | Innocence | Man | Men | Virtue | Virtue |

James William Fulbright

Of all the animals on earth, man has shown himself to be the most cruel and brutal. He is the only animal that will create instruments of death for his own destruction. Man is the only animal on all the earth that has ever been known to burn its young as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of some imaginary deity. He is the only one that will build homes, towns, and cities at such a cost in sacrifice and suffering and turn around and destroy them in war.

Character | Cost | Death | Destroy | Earth | Man | Sacrifice | Suffering | War | Will |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing serves better to illustrate a man’s character than the things which he finds ridiculous. the ridiculous arises from a moral contrast which is innocently placed before the senses. The sensual man will often laugh when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it may be that moves him, he will always reveal the fact that he is pleased with himself.

Better | Character | Contrast | Man | Nothing | Will |

Henry Fielding

There are two considerations which always embitter the heart of an avaricious man - the one is a perpetual thirst after more riches, the other the prospect of leaving what he has already acquired.

Character | Heart | Man | Riches |