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

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

We need above all to learn again to believe in the possibility of nobility of spirit in ourselves.

Character | Need | Nobility | Spirit | Learn |

Theodore Refke

What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance.

Character | Madness | Nobility | Soul |

Henri Frédéric Amiel

What is threatened today is moral liberty, conscience, respect for the soul, the very nobility of man. To defend the soul, its interests, its rights, its dignity, is the most pressing duty for whoever sees the danger.

Conscience | Danger | Dignity | Duty | Liberty | Man | Nobility | Respect | Rights | Soul | Respect |

Os Guiness

There is only the nobility of the compassion of the enlightened on their road to the “liberation” of extinction.

Compassion | Nobility |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Death is the radical refutation of man’s power and a stark reminder of the necessity to relate to a meaning which lies beyond the dimension of human time. Humanity without death would be arrogance without end. Nobility has its root in humanity, and humanity derived much of its power from the thought of death.

Arrogance | Death | Humanity | Man | Meaning | Necessity | Nobility | Power | Thought | Time | Thought |

Barrett McGurn

The world’s inability to achieve a unity of thought and to end spiritual divisions is the real reason society is so deeply unhappy, so poor in ideas and enthusiasm, and so lacking in shared spiritual concepts which are its own inner joy, nobility and strength.

Enthusiasm | Ideas | Joy | Nobility | Reason | Society | Strength | Thought | Unity | World | Society | Thought |

Hindustani Proverbs

There is nothing noble about being superior to some other person. True nobility is in being superior to your previous self.

Nobility | Nothing | Self |

Theodore Roethke

What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, my shadow pinned against a sweating wall, that place among the rocks--is it a cave, or winding path? The edge is what I have.

Madness | Nobility | Purity | Soul |

Chris Hedges

The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true; It does create a sense of comradeship, which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong. War allows us to rise above our small stations in life. We find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War, for those who enter into combat, has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the "lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.

Alienation | Beauty | Bible | Cause | Diversion | Feelings | Life | Life | Lust | Meaning | Nobility | Self | Sense | Time | War | Bible |

Lawrence G. Lovasik

Any fool can try to defend his mistakes - and most fools do - but it gives one a feeling of nobility to admit one's mistakes. By fighting, you never get enough, but by yielding, you get more than you expected.

Enough | Fighting | Nobility | Yielding |

Albert Camus

The nobility of our calling will always be rooted in two commitments difficult to observe: refusal to lie about what we know, and resistance to oppression.

Nobility | Oppression | Will |

Archibald Rutledge

You should remember that though another may have more money, beauty, and brains than you, when it comes to the rarer spiritual values such as charity, self-sacrifice, honor and nobility of heart, you have an equal chance with everyone to be the most beloved and honored of all people.

Beauty | Chance | Charity | Heart | Honor | Money | Nobility | People | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice |

A.C. Benson, fully Arthur Christopher “A.C.” Benson

Religious worship is only as it were a postern by the side of the great portals of beauty and nobility and truth. One whose heart is filled with a yearning mystery at the sight of the starry heavens, who can adore the splendor of noble actions, courageous deeds, patient affections, who can see and love the beauty so abundantly shed abroad in the world… he can at all these moments draw near to God, and open his soul to the influx of the Divine Spirit.

Beauty | Deeds | God | Heart | Love | Mystery | Nobility | Soul | Spirit | Truth | World | Worship | Beauty |

Bruce Barton

As the years accumulate do you find yourself more sympathetic and tolerant, with a higher reverence for the nobility of your fellow men? That is the essential test of growth.

Growth | Men | Nobility | Reverence |

David Sarnoff

Virtue does not of necessity go hand in hand with primitive plumbing, and nobility can be found in a skyscraper no less than in a log cabin.

Necessity | Nobility | Virtue | Virtue |