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

Adolfo Barcella

Unrequited love is the meaning of life. We’re here to love but not to be loved, to give but not receive. Our mission in this world is to improve humanity and leave a better history than we found. Only selfless love has such power. Only love without interest or expectation of reward can change human beings... To give love without receiving love is the truest love and brings the greatest happiness there is in life.

Better | Change | Character | Expectation | History | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mission | Power | Receive | Reward | World | Expectation | Happiness |

Richard Baxter

I must confess, as the experience of my own soul, that the expectation of loving my friends in heaven principally kindles my love to them while on earth.

Character | Earth | Expectation | Experience | Heaven | Love | Soul | Expectation | Friends |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Even when we fancy we have grown wiser, it is only, it may be, that new prejudices have displaced old ones.

Character | Old |

William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall

The highest part of the art of life is the expectation of miracles.

Art | Character | Expectation | Life | Life | Miracles | Art | Expectation |

Thomas Chalmers

Benevolence is not in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth. It is a business with men as they are, and with human life as drawn by the rough hand of experience. It is a duty which you must perform at the call of principle; though there be no voice of eloquence to give splendor to your exertions, and no music of poetry to lead your willing footsteps through the bowers of enchantment. It is not the impulse of high and ecstatic emotion. It is an exertion of principle. :You must go to the poor man’s cottage, though no verdure flourish around it, the gentleness of its murmurs. If you look for the romantic simplicity of fiction you will be disappointed; but it is your duty to persevere in spite of every discouragement. Benevolence is not merely a feeling but a principle; not a dream of rapture for the fancy to indulge in, but a business for the hand to execute.

Benevolence | Business | Character | Duty | Experience | Gentleness | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Men | Music | Poetry | Simplicity | Truth | Will | Business |

William Congreve

Uncertainty and expectation are the joyous of life. Security is an insipid thing, and the overtaking and possessing or a wish discovers the folly of the chase.

Character | Expectation | Folly | Life | Life | Security | Uncertainty | Wisdom | Expectation |

Richard Cecil

We are too fond of our own will; we want to be doing what we fancy mighty things: but the great point is to do small things, when called to them, in a right spirit.

Character | Right | Spirit | Will |

Owen Feltham

All earthly delights are sweeter in expectation than enjoyment; abut all spiritual pleasures more in fruition than expectation.

Character | Enjoyment | Expectation | Expectation |

Henry Fielding

Contempt of others is the truest symptom of a base and bad heart, while it suggests itself to the mean and the vile, and tickles their little fancy on every occasion, it never enters the great and good mind but on the strongest motives; nor is it then a welcome guest - affording only an uneasy sensation, and bringing always with it a mixture of concern and compassion.

Character | Compassion | Contempt | Good | Heart | Little | Mind | Motives |

Henry Home, Lord Kames

We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment.

Character | Enjoyment | Expectation | Expectation |

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

We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more. A straw or a feather sustains itself long in the air.

Character | Strength | Weakness |

Christian Nestell Bovee

There is no sense of weariness like that which closes a day of eager and unintermitted pursuit of pleasure. The apple is eaten and the core sticks in the throat. Expectation has given way to ennui, and appetite to satiety.

Appetite | Day | Ennui | Expectation | Pleasure | Satiety | Sense | Wisdom | Expectation |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

There is no such thing as luck. It's a fancy name for being always at our duty, and so sure to be ready when good time comes.

Duty | Good | Luck | Time | Wisdom |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

We part more easily with what we possess, than with the expectation of what we wish for: and the reason of it is, that what we expect is always greater than what we enjoy.

Expectation | Reason | Wisdom | Expectation |

James Frank Dobie

Putting on the spectacles of science in expectation of finding the answer to everything looked at signifies inner blindness.

Expectation | Science | Wisdom | Expectation |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

People always fancy that we must become old to become wise; but, in truth, as years advance, it is hard to keep ourselves as wise as we were.

People | Truth | Wisdom | Wise | Old |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

Poetry is like painting: one piece takes your fancy if you stand close to it, another if you keep at some distance.

Poetry | Wisdom |