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

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

A great estate is a great disadvantage to those who do not know hot to use it, for nothing is more common than to see wealthy persons live scandalously and miserably; riches do them no service in order to virtue and happiness; it is precept and principle, not an estate, that makes a man good for something.

Character | Good | Man | Nothing | Order | Precept | Riches | Service | Virtue | Virtue | Riches |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

‘Tis precept and principle, not an estate, that makes a man good for something.

Character | Good | Man | Precept |

Arthur Warwick

Too many follow example rather than precept; but it is safer to learn rather from precept than example. Man a wise teacher does not follow his own teaching; for it is easier to say, do this, than to do it. If then I see good doctrine with an evil life, though I pity the last, I will follow the first. Good sayings belong to all; evil actions only to their authors.

Character | Doctrine | Evil | Example | Good | Life | Life | Man | Pity | Precept | Will | Wise | Learn | Teacher |

Ignaz von Döllinger, fully Johann Ignaz von Döllinger

In 1881… “The false and repulsive precept that mankind is perpetually called upon to avenge the sins and errors of the forefathers upon the innocent descendents, has ruled the world far too long, and has blotted the countries of Europe with shameful and abominable deeds, from which we turn away in horror.”

Deeds | Mankind | Precept | World |

Jeremy Taylor

When we pray for any virtue, we should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for it; the form of your prayers should be the rule of your life; every petition to god is a precept to man.

God | Life | Life | Man | Precept | Rule | Virtue | Virtue | God |

Aristotle NULL

Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately... They have as yet met with few disappointments. Their lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can only look forward... They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral goodness leads us to choose what is noble. They are fonder of their friends, intimates, and companions than older men are, because they like spending their days in the company of others, and have not yet come to value either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too much and hate too much, and the same thing with everything else. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.

Day | Deeds | Expectation | Future | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Men | Nothing | Past | Precept | Usefulness | Youth | Deeds | Youth | Expectation | Friends | Think | Value |

Denis Diderot

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

Inconvenient | Precept |

Immanuel Kant

Virtue... in so far as it is based on internal freedom, contains a positive command for man, namely, that he should bring all his powers and inclinations under his rule (that of reason); and this is a positive precept of command over himself which is additional to the prohibition, namely, that he should not allow himself to be governed by his feelings and inclinations (the duty of apathy); since, unless reason takes the reins of government into its own hands, the feelings and inclinations play the master over the man.

Apathy | Duty | Feelings | Freedom | Government | Man | Play | Precept | Reason | Rule | Virtue | Virtue | Government |

John Ruskin

Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave. It is not teaching the youth the shapes of letters and the tricks of numbers, and then leaving them to turn their arithmetic to roguery, and their literature to lust. It means, on the contrary, training them into the perfect exercise and kingly continence of their bodies and souls. It is a painful, continual and difficult work, to be done by kindness, by watching, by warning, by precept and by praise, but above all - by example.

Education | Example | Kindness | Literature | Lust | Means | People | Praise | Precept | Training | Warning | Work | Youth | Youth |

Robert Grudin

Each of us occupies two temporal modalities of being: one which exists in the present and one which stretches through time to our lives’ limits. While the former constantly demands our attention, it is upon the latter that every precept of behavior and hope of happiness is based.

Attention | Behavior | Hope | Precept | Present | Time | Happiness |

William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet

Temperance, that virtue without pride, and fortune without envy, that gives indolence of body with an equality of mind; the best guardian of youth and support of old age; the precept of reason as well as religion, and physician of the soul as well as the body; the tutelary goddess of health and universal medicine of life.

Age | Body | Envy | Equality | Fortune | Health | Indolence | Life | Life | Mind | Old age | Precept | Pride | Reason | Religion | Soul | Virtue | Virtue | Youth | Youth | Old |

Thomas Carlyle

Let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this precept well to heart: “Do the duty which lies nearest to thee,” which thou knowest to be a duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

Darkness | Dawn | Day | Duty | Heart | Light | Precept | Will |

W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham

To do each day two things one dislikes is a precept I have followed scrupulously: Every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.

Day | Precept |

James Russell Lowell

Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances.

Impulse | Life | Life | Precept |

Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

The fundamental precept of liberty is toleration. We can not permit any inquisition either within or without the law or apply any religious test to the holding of office. The mind of America must be forever free.

Law | Liberty | Mind | Precept |

Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served as little as possible... to serve others as much as possible.

Little | Precept |

Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Surely the love of our country is a lesson of reason, not an institution of nature. Education and habit, obligation and interest, attach us to it, not instinct. It is, however, so necessary to be cultivated, and the prosperity of all societies, as well as the grandeur of some, depends upon it so much, that orators by their eloquence, and poets by their enthusiasm, have endeavoured to work up this precept of morality into a principle of passion. But the examples which we find in history, improved by the lively descriptions and the just applauses or censures of historians, will have a much better and more permanent effect than declamation, or song, or the dry ethics of mere philosophy.

Better | Education | Ethics | Lesson | Love | Morality | Obligation | Precept | Prosperity | Will | Work |