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

Constitution of the Five Nations NULL

With endless patience you shall carry out your duty, and your firmness shall be tempered with tenderness for your people. Neither anger nor fury shall lodge in your mind, and all your words and actions shall be marked with calm deliberation. In all your deliberations in the Council, in your efforts at lawmaking, in all your official acts, self-interest shall be cast into oblivion. Cast not away the warnings of any others, if they should chide you for any error or wrong you may do, but return to the way of the Great Law, which is just and right. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the earth - the unborn of the future Nation.

Anger | Character | Deliberation | Duty | Earth | Error | Firmness | Fury | Future | Law | Mind | Oblivion | Patience | People | Present | Right | Self | Self-interest | Tenderness | Words | Wrong |

Tyron Edwards

Duty performed gives clearness and firmness to faith, and faith thus strengthened through duty becomes the more assured and satisfying soul.

Character | Duty | Faith | Firmness | Soul |

Abraham Lincoln

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphans - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Battle | Care | Character | Charity | Firmness | God | Malice | Nations | Peace | Right | Work | God |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Obstinacy is the strength of the weak. Firmness founded upon principle, upon the truth and right, order and law, duty and generosity, is the obstinacy of sages.

Character | Duty | Firmness | Generosity | Law | Order | Right | Strength | Truth |

Publius Syrus

Unity gives strength and firmness to the humblest.

Character | Firmness | Strength | Unity |

Tyron Edwards

Duty performed gives clearness and firmness to faith, and faith becomes the more assured and satisfying to the soul.

Duty | Faith | Firmness | Soul | Wisdom |

Thomas Erskine, Lord Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine

That which is called firmness in a king is called obstinacy in a donkey.

Firmness | Wisdom |

Washington Irving

Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising by mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the bitterest blast of adversity.

Adversity | Dependence | Firmness | Force | Husband | Life | Life | Misfortune | Nothing | Weakness | Wisdom |

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

It is only persons of firmness that can have real gentleness. Those who appear gentle are, in general, only a weak character, which easily changes into asperity.

Character | Firmness | Gentleness |

Edmund Burke

Obstinacy, sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues - constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness - are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so jut an abhorrence; and in their excess all these virtues very easily fall into it.

Cause | Constancy | Excess | Fidelity | Firmness | Fortitude | Magnanimity |

George Washington

I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an “honest man.”

Character | Enough | Firmness | Hope | Man | Virtue | Virtue |

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The greatest firmness is the greatest mercy.

Firmness | Mercy |

Thomas Fuller

Judge of thine improvement, not by what thou speakest or writest, but by the firmness of thy mind, and the government of thy passions and affections.

Firmness | Government | Improvement | Mind | Government |

William Hazlitt

There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and decision of character. I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it.

Character | Circumstances | Decision | Firmness | Mind | Nothing |

Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I

When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary.

Firmness | Rashness |

Nikola Tesla

I have observed in the House of Morgan a largeness, nobility and firmness of character the like of which is very scarce indeed. I can only smile when I read the attempts to find something discreditable in the transactions of J.P. Morgan & Co. Not a hundred of such investigations will ever uncover anything which an unprejudiced judge would not consider honorable, fair, decent and in every way conforming to the high ideals and ethical standards of business. I would be willing to stake my life on it.

Character | Firmness | Ideals | Life | Life | Nobility | Smile | Will |

Phyllis McGinley

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness . It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is important to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.

Children | Courage | Enough | Firmness | Flexibility | Fortitude | Important | Mother | Necessity | Patience | Praise | Flexibility | Parent |

Phyllis McGinley

God know that a mother need fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul.

Courage | Firmness | Flexibility | Fortitude | Mother | Need | Patience | Flexibility |

Saint Vincent de Paul

Work at ridding yourself of the esteem you have had up to now for the glitter and sparkle of virtue and the vain applause of the world, which Our Lord so assiduously avoided and so often recommends us to shun, and that you labor in earnest to acquire true and solid virtues.

Firmness | Leniency | Majority |