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

Melvin Tolson, fully Melvin Beaunorus Tolson

Since we live in a changing universe, why do men oppose change?... If a rock is in the way, the root of a tree will change its direction. The dumbest animals try to adapt themselves to changed conditions. Even a rat will change its tactics to get a piece of cheese.

Change | Character | Men | Universe | Will |

William Graham Sumner

It is taught that willing and voluntary service to others is the highest duty and glory in human life... The men of talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the works of art. The benefit and enjoyment go to the whole. There are those who joyfully order their own lives so that they may serve the welfare of mankind.

Art | Books | Character | Duty | Enjoyment | Glory | Life | Life | Mankind | Men | Order | Rest | Service | Talent |

Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

The world will never be in any manner of order or tranquillity until men are firmly convinced that conscience, honor and credit are all in one interest; and that without he concurrence of the former the latter are but impositions upon ourselves and others.

Character | Conscience | Credit | Honor | Men | Order | Tranquility | Will | World |

William Mackergo Taylor

Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred.

Character | Leisure | Men | Temptation | Time |

William Graham Sumner

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found the courage to say that there is none.

Character | Courage | Men | Happiness |

George Stanley, fully George Francis Gillman Stanley

To live, mankind must recover its essential humanness and its innate divinity; men must recover their capacity for humility, sanity and integrity; soldiers and civilians must see their hope in some other world than one completely dominated by the physical and chemical sciences.

Capacity | Character | Divinity | Hope | Humility | Integrity | Mankind | Men | Sanity | World |

Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

We do not judge men by what they are in themselves, but by what they are relatively to us.

Character | Men |

Jeremy Taylor

It is a little learning, and but a little, which makes men conclude hastily. Experience and humility teach modesty and fear.

Character | Experience | Fear | Humility | Learning | Little | Men | Modesty | Teach |

Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff

Although men are accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owners knows not of.

Character | Gold | Knowing | Men | Strength | Weakness |

Jeremy Taylor

If men knew what felicity dwells in the cottage of a godly man, how sound he sleeps, how quiet his rest, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his position, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throngs of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites that fill the house of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious.

Care | Character | Heart | Man | Men | Mind | Position | Quiet | Rest | Sound |

Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

Vanity makes men ridiculous, pride odious, and ambition terrible.

Ambition | Character | Men | Pride | Ambition |

William Graham Sumner

The four great motives which move men to social activity are hunger, love, vanity, and fear of superior powers. If we search out the causes which have moved men to war we find them under each of these motives or interests.

Character | Fear | Hunger | Love | Men | Motives | Search | War |

William Graham Sumner

The men who start out with the notion that the world owes them a living generally find that the world pays its debt in the penitentiary or the poorhouse.

Character | Debt | Men | World |

Theognis, aka Theognis of Megara NULL

What fools men are to weep the dead and gone! Unwept, youth drops its petals one by one.

Character | Men | Youth | Youth |