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

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Noble discontent is the path to heaven.

Character | Discontent | Heaven |

Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

There is no surer formula for discontent than to try to satisfy our cravings for the ocean of Infinite Love from the teacup of finite satisfactions.

Character | Discontent | Love |

Robert Southey

Man hath a weary pilgrimage, as through the world he wends; on every stage, from youth to age, still discontent attends.

Age | Character | Discontent | Man | World | Youth | Youth |

Clarence Edwin Flynn

Aristotle said that all creative people are dissatisfied because they are looking for happiness in perfection and seeking for things that do not exist. This is one of the hopes of the world. There is no progress where people are satisfied. Discontent is perhaps the most potent challenge to improvement.

Challenge | Discontent | Improvement | People | Perfection | Progress | Wisdom | World | Happiness |

Joseph Gerrald

Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented, the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish; but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil.

Aid | Discontent | Era | Eternal | Folly | Freedom | History | Madness | People | Principles | Purity | Reverence | Truth | Tyranny | Will | Wisdom |

Gordon Graham

There are two kinds of discontent in this world: The discontent that works, and the discontent that wrings its hands. The first gets what it wants, and the second loses what it has. There's no cure for the first but success; and there's no cure at all for the second.

Discontent | Success | Wants | Wisdom | World |

S. Truett Cathy

It’s easier to succeed because failure exacts a high price in terms of time when you have to do a job over. It’s easier to succeed because success eliminates the agony and frustration of defeat. It’s easier to succeed because money spent to fail must be spent again to succeed. It’s easier to succeed because a person’s credibility decreases with each failure, making it harder to succeed the second time. And it’s easier to succeed because joy and expressions of affirmation come from succeeding, whereas feelings of discouragement and discontent accompany failure.

Agony | Defeat | Discontent | Failure | Feelings | Joy | Money | Price | Success | Time | Failure |

Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure. I believe that restlessness is discontent, and discontent is merely the first necessity of progress.

Discontent | Failure | Man | Necessity | Progress | Restlessness | Will |

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

And from the discontent of man The world's best progress springs.

Discontent | Man | Progress | World |

Eric Hoffer

There is probably nothing more sublime than discontent transmuted into a work of art, a scientific discovery, and so on.

Art | Discontent | Discovery | Nothing | Work |

Immanuel Kant

To secure one’s own happiness is a duty, at least indirectly; for discontent with one’s condition, under a pressure of many anxieties and amidst unsatisfied wants, might easily become a great temptation to transgression of duty.

Discontent | Duty | Temptation | Wants | Happiness | Temptation |

James Freeman Clarke

The root of all discontent is self-love.

Discontent | Love | Self | Self-love |

Lewis Thomas

We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying unable to sit still.

Discontent | Earth | Future | Present | Worry |

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The splendid discontent of God With chaos made the world. And from the discontent of man The worlds best progress springs.

Discontent | God | Man | Progress | God |

Horace William Baden Donegan

When electricity was invented people became discontent with oil lamps. And so our missionaries employ this sound business principle: Show the people something better and they’ll want it.

Better | Business | Discontent | People | Sound | Business |

Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

Discontentment is human, contentment is divine. Animals know neither contentment nor discontentment; they simply go on living mechanically, unconsciously. It is the great privilege of human being to be aware of discontent. To be aware of discontent means there is a possibility to grow towards contentment. But very few people make any effort towards inner growth. Their whole life is rooted in a misunderstanding. They think that if they have a bigger house or more money or more power or more prestige they will be contented; that if they become famous, if their name is known all over the world, then they will be contented. That is sheer nonsense.

Contentment | Discontent | Effort | Life | Life | Means | Money | People | Power | Will | Privilege | Think |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Happiness is not a synonym for self-satisfaction, complacency, or smugness. Self-satisfaction breeds futility and despair. All that is creative in man stems from a seed of endless discontent. New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done looks like a distortion. The aim is the maintenance and fanning of a discontent with our aspirations and achievements, the maintenance and fanning of a craving that knows no satisfaction. Man’s true fulfillment depends upon communion with that which transcends him.

Discontent | Fulfillment | Insight | Looks | Man |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

We live in the future. Even the happiness of the present is made up mostly of that delightful discontent which the hope of better things inspires.

Better | Discontent | Hope | Present | Happiness |