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

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The want of goods is easily repaired, but the poverty of the soul is irreparable.

Character | Poverty | Soul |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Vice leaves repentance in the soul like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself; for reason effaces all other griefs and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance, which is so much the more grievous, by reason it springs within, as the cold and hot of fevers are more sharp than those that only strike upon the outward skin.

Character | Reason | Repentance | Soul |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Greatness of soul is not so much mounting high and pressing forward, as knowing how to put oneself in order and circumscribe oneself. It regards as great all that is enough and shows its elevation by preferring moderate things to eminent ones. There is nothing so beautiful and just as to play the man well and fitly, nor any knowledge so arduous as to know how to live this life well and naturally; and of all our maladies the most barbarous is to despise our being.

Character | Despise | Enough | Greatness | Knowing | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Order | Play | Soul |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Love hates people to be attached to each other except by himself, and takes a laggard part in relations that are set up and maintained under another title, as marriage is. Connections and means have, with reason, as much weight in it as graces and beauty, or more. We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry must as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us. Therefore I like this fashion of arranging it rather by a third hand than by our own, and by the sense of other rather than by our own. How opposite is all this to the conventions of love!

Beauty | Character | Family | Love | Marriage | Means | People | Posterity | Practice | Race | Reason | Sense | Title |

John F. Milburn

Fear is like fire: If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled, it will rise up and destroy you. Men's actions depend a great deal upon fear. We do things either because we enjoy doing them or because we are afraid not to do them. This sort of fear has not relation to physical or moral courage. It is inspired by the knowledge that we are not adequately prepared to face the future and the events it may bring - poverty perhaps, or injury, or death.

Character | Courage | Death | Destroy | Events | Fear | Future | Knowledge | Men | Poverty | Will | Afraid |

Alberto Moravia, Pen name of Alberto Pincherle

Modern man - whether in the womb of the masses, or with his workmates, or with his family, or alone - can never for one moment forget that he is living in a world in which he is a means and whose end is not his business.

Business | Character | Family | Man | Means | World |

Donald Marr Nelson

We must drop the idea that change comes slowly.

Change | Character |

Hephzibah Menuhin

Freedom means choosing your burden.

Character | Freedom | Means | Wisdom |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

All honorable means of safeguarding ourselves from evils are not only permitted but laudable. And constancy’s part is played principally in bearing troubles patiently where there is no remedy.

Character | Constancy | Means | Troubles |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the soul is irreparable.

Character | Poverty | Soul |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The virtue of the soul does not insist in flying high, but in walking orderly.

Character | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity.

Character | Mediocrity | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |

Maurice Nicoll

No one can change himself beyond his life, hereafter, beyond his Time, but only within his life. His attainment of unity is something that must belong to his life, this life, that is himself; and if we can equate unity and ‘eternal life’, it is something that cannot life in some ‘tomorrow’ or ‘hereafter’ beyond a man’s life. Its possibilities belong to us now, to something we have to do now. It is this life that must be worked upon, be made more real, by separating the false by insight.

Attainment | Change | Character | Eternal | Insight | Life | Life | Man | Time | Tomorrow | Unity |

Jean-Antoine Petit-Senn

The true worth of a soul is revealed as much by the motive it attributes to the actions of others as by its own deeds.

Character | Deeds | Soul | Worth |

Jean-Jacques "J.J." Olier

Revelations are the aberration of faith; they are an amusement that spoils simplicity in relation to God, that embarrasses the soul and makes it swerve from its directness in relation to God. They distract the soul and occupy it with others than God.

Character | Faith | God | Simplicity | Soul |

Andrew Preston Peabody

The force, the mass of character, mind, heart or soul that a man can put into any work is the most important factor in that work.

Character | Force | Heart | Important | Man | Mind | Soul | Work |

Plotinus NULL

For on earth, in all the succession of life, it is not the Soul within but the Shadow outside of the authentic man, that grieves and complains and acts out the plot on this world stage which men have dotted with stages of their own constructing. All this is the doing of man knowing no more than to live the lower and outer life.

Character | Earth | Knowing | Life | Life | Man | Men | Soul | World |

Oliver North, fully Lt. Colonel Oliver Laurence North

We are not here to predict the future but to change it for the good.

Change | Character | Future | Good |