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

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

Obedience to duty means resistance to self.

Character | Duty | Means | Obedience | Self | Wisdom |

Shana Alexander, fully Shana Agar Alexander

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Character | Excellence | People | Truth | Excellence |

Francis Atterbury

A good character when established should not be rested in as an end, but only employed as a means of doing still further good.

Character | Good | Means |

Berthold Auerbach

Being alone when one’s belief is firm, is not to be alone.

Belief | Character |

Lord Acton, John Emerich Dalberg-Acton

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

Character | Liberty | Means | Wisdom |

Isaac Barrow

If we desire to live securely, comfortably, and quietly, that by all honest means we should endeavor to purchase the good will of all men, and provoke no man’s enmity needlessly; since any man’s love may be useful, and every man’s hatred is dangerous.

Character | Desire | Good | Love | Man | Means | Men | Will |

Max Beerbohm, fully Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm

To say that a man is vain simply means that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself.

Character | Man | Means | People |

Ahad HaAm, pen name, born Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg

Whoever sets out to persuade men to accept a new idea, or one which seems to be new, not just as an idea, but as a truth that is felt, should know beforehand that the human mind is not a blank sheet, on which one an write with ease, and should not therefore grieve or despair when he finds that people do not pay attention to him.

Attention | Character | Despair | Men | Mind | People | Truth |

Joseph von Auffenberg

He that does not respect confidence will never find happiness in his path. The belief in virtue vanishes from his heart; the source of nobler actions becomes extinct in him.

Belief | Character | Confidence | Heart | Respect | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wisdom | Respect | Happiness |

Aśvaghoṣa NULL

The purpose of this discipline is to bring man into the habit of applying the insight that has come to him as the result of the preceding disciplines. When one is rising, standing, walking, doing something, stopping, one should constantly concentrate one’s mind on the act and the doing of it, not on one’s relation to the act, or its character or value. One should think: there is walking, there is stopping, there is realizing; not, I am walking, I am doing this, it is a good thing, it is disagreeable, I am gaining merit, it is I who am realizing how wonderful it is. Thence come vagrant thoughts, feelings of elation or of failure and unhappiness. Instead of all this, one should simply practice concentration of the mind on the act itself, understanding it to be an expedient means for attaining tranquillity of mind, realization, insight and Wisdom; and one should follow the practice in faith, willingness and gladness. After long practice the bondage of old habits become weakened and disappears, and in its place appear confidence, satisfaction, awareness and tranquillity. What is the Way of Wisdom designed to accomplish? There are three classes of conditions that hinder one from advancing along the path to Enlightenment. First, there are the allurements arising from the senses, from external conditions and from the discriminating mind. Second, there are the internal conditions of the mind, its thoughts, desires and mood. All these the earlier practices (ethical and mortificatory) are designed to eliminate. In the third class of impediments are placed the individual’s instinctive and fundamental (and therefore most insidious and persistent) urges - the will to live and to enjoy, the will to cherish one’s personality, the will to propagate, which give rise to greed and lust, fear and anger, infatuation, pride and egotism. The practice of the Wisdom Paramita is designed to control and eliminate these fundamental and instinctive hindrances.

Anger | Awareness | Character | Confidence | Control | Discipline | Enlightenment | Failure | Faith | Fear | Feelings | Good | Greed | Habit | Individual | Insight | Lust | Man | Means | Merit | Mind | Personality | Practice | Pride | Purpose | Purpose | Tranquility | Understanding | Unhappiness | Will | Wisdom | Failure | Awareness | Old |

Roy I. Bagley

Right thinking is a prerequisite to right living... In truth the destiny of any life is determined by what fills that mind.

Character | Destiny | Life | Life | Mind | Right | Thinking | Truth | Wisdom |

Francis Ellington Abbot

Just as a tested and rugged virtue of the moral hero is worth more than the lovely, tender, untried innocence of the child, so is the massive strength of a soul that has conquered truth for itself worth more than the soft peach-bloom faith of a soul that takes truth on trust.

Character | Faith | Hero | Innocence | Soul | Strength | Trust | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Worth |

Herbert Sebastian Agar

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.

Character | Men | Truth |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Once thing here is worth a great deal, to pass thy life in truth and justice, with a benevolent disposition even to liars and unjust men.

Character | Justice | Life | Life | Men | Truth | Worth |

George Bancroft

Beauty, like truth and justice, lives within us; like virtue, and like moral law, it is a companion of the soul.

Beauty | Character | Justice | Law | Moral law | Soul | Truth | Virtue | Virtue |