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

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

Character | Death | Life | Life | People | Wise |

Abel Bonnard

The moral life of any people rises or falls with the vitality or decay of its religious life.

Character | Life | Life | People |

Arthur Burns, fully Arthur Frank Burns

In addition to the inflation, we have stagnating productivity. People don’t work the way they used to.

Character | People | Work |

Hugh Blair

Sentiment and principle are often mistaken for each other, though, in fact, they widely differ. Sentiment is the virtue of ideas; principle the virtue of action. Sentiment has its seat in the had; principle, in the heart. Sentiment suggest fine harangues and subtle distinctions; principle conceives just notions, and performs good actions in consequence of them. Sentiment refines away the simplicity of truth, and the plainness of piety; and "gives us virtue in words, and vice in deeds."

Action | Character | Deeds | Good | Heart | Ideas | Piety | Sentiment | Simplicity | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Words | Vice |

Yosef Leib Bloch, fully R' Yosef Yehudah Leib Bloch

It is a fundamental principle that no person can entirely free himself from taking the people in his environment into consideration. When doing something in the presence of others, it is impossible not to think about how other people will view what you are doing... Any good act you do will be much purer if others are not aware of you.

Character | Consideration | Good | People | Will | Think |

Margaret Bourke-White

Only by his action can a man make (himself/his life) whole... You are responsible for what you have done and the people whom you have influenced. In the end it is only the work that counts.

Action | Character | Life | Life | Man | People | Work |

Marcia Borowsky

A child asked a man to pick a flower for her. that was simple enough. But when she said, "Now put it back," the man experienced a baffling helplessness he never knew before. "How can you explain that it cannot be done?" he asked. "How can one make clear to young people that there are some things which, once broken, once mutilated, can never be replaced or mended?"

Character | Enough | Man | People | Child |

Jean de La Bruyère

False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.

Character | Deceit | Light | Man | Modesty | Reputation | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

Jean de La Bruyère

The most amiable people are those who least wound the self-love of others.

Character | Love | People | Self | Self-love | Wisdom |

Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne

Most people are dissatisfied, because too few know that the distance between one and nothing is greater than that between one and a thousand.

Character | Nothing | People |

Jean de La Bruyère

Never judge people by their appearance.

Appearance | Character | People |

Black Hawk, born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak NULL

My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon and cultivate as far as necessary for their subsistence, and so long as they occupy and cultivate it they have the right to the soil, but if they voluntarily leave it then any other people have a right to settle on it. Nothing can be sold, except things that can be carried away.

Character | Children | Land | Nothing | People | Reason | Right | Spirit | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

Beware so long as you live, of judging people by appearances.

Character | People |

Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen

Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.

Character | People |

Lenny Bruce, born Leonard Alfred Schneider

Every day, people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

Character | Church | Day | God | People | Wisdom |