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

Aristotle NULL

The avarice of mankind is insatiable... it is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

Avarice | Desire | Mankind | Men | Nature |

Arthur Schopenhauer

The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it; accordingly, they parade their doctrine in all seriousness as true sensu proprio, and as these doctrines, you have the great mischief of a continual fraud.

Doctrine | Fraud | Nature |

Ben Sira

He who seeketh vanity findeth delusion.

Delusion |

Blaise Pascal

What vanity is painting, which attracts admiration to things which in the original we do not admire.

Admiration |

Charles Caleb Colton

Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a mean to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.

Ambition | Avarice | Mistake | Power | Wealth |

Christopher Fry

It's always our touches of vanity that manage to betray us.

Dante, full name Durante degli Alighieri, aka Dante Alighieri NULL

Three sparks - pride, envy, and avarice - have been kindled in all hearts.

Avarice | Envy | Pride |

Edmund Burke

Greater mischief happens often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.

Ambition | Avarice | Folly | Meanness |

Edmund Burke

Terrible consequences there will always be when the mean vices attempt to mimic the grand passions. Great men will never do great mischief but for some great end.

Consequences | Men | Will |

Edmund Burke

Of all vanities of fopperies, the vanity of high birth is the greatest. True nobility is derived from virtue, not from birth. Titles, indeed, may be purchased, but virtue is the only coin that makes the bargain valid.

Birth | Nobility | Virtue | Virtue |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own... The most violent passions sometimes leave us at rest, but vanity agitates us constantly.

People | Rest |

Edmund Burke

Idleness is the badge of the gentry, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other diseases; for the mind is naturally active, and, if it is not occupied about some honest business, it rushes into mischief or sinks into melancholy.

Body | Business | Cause | Devil | Discipline | Idleness | Melancholy | Mind |

Edmund Burke

Great mischiefs happen more often from folly, meanness, and vanity, than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.

Ambition | Avarice | Folly | Meanness |

Eric Hoffer

We probably have a greater love for those we support than those who support us. Our vanity carries more weight than our self-interest... There is sublime thieving in all giving. Someone gives us all he has and we are his.

Giving | Love | Self | Self-interest |