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

Benjamin Franklin

To God we owe fear and love; to our neighbours justice and character; to our selves prudence and sobriety.

Character | Fear | God | Justice | Love | Prudence | Prudence | God |

Willard Gaylen

Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential - generosity, service, self-sacrificed, unselfishness and duty.

Character | Duty | Emotions | Generosity | Guilt | Qualities | Self | Service | Shame | Society |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Our piety must be weak and imperfect if it do not conquer our fear of death.

Character | Death | Fear | Piety |

John Ford

Let them fear bondage who are slaves to fear; the sweetest freedom is an honest heart.

Character | Fear | Freedom | Heart |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

What can be the aim of withholding from children, or let us say from young people, this information about the sexual life of human beings? Is it a fear of arousing interest in such matters prematurely, before it spontaneously stirs in them? Is it a hope of retarding by concealment of this kind the development of the sexual instinct in general, until such time as it can find its way into the only channels open to it in the civilized social order? Is it supposed that children would show no interest or understanding for the facts and riddles of sexual life if they were not prompted to do so by outside influence? Is it regarded as possible that the knowledge withheld from them will not reach them in other ways? Or is it genuinely and seriously intended that later on they should consider everything connected with sex as something despicable and abhorrent from which their parents and teachers wish to keep them apart as long as possible? I am really at a loss so say which of these can be the motive for the customary concealment from children of everything connected with sex. I only know that these arguments are one and all equally foolish, and that I find it difficult to pay them the compliment of serious refutation.

Character | Children | Concealment | Fear | Hope | Influence | Instinct | Knowledge | Life | Life | Order | Parents | People | Time | Understanding | Will | Loss |

Harry Emerson Fosdick

It is cynicism and fear that freezes life: it is faith that thaws it out, releases it, sets it free.

Character | Cynicism | Faith | Fear | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Samuel Goldwyn

No person who is enthusiastic about his work has anything to fear from life.

Character | Fear | Life | Life | Wisdom | Work |

Robert Hall

Let your words be few and digested, it is a shame for the tongue to cry the heart mercy, much more to cast itself upon the uncertain pardon of others’ ears.

Character | Heart | Mercy | Pardon | Shame | Words |

Samuel Griswold Goodrich, better known by pseudonymn Peter Parley

Moral courage is a virtue of higher cast and nobler origin than physical. It springs from a consciousness of virtue and renders a man, in the pursuit or defense of right, superior to the fear of reproach, opposition in contempt.

Character | Consciousness | Contempt | Courage | Defense | Fear | Man | Opposition | Right | Virtue | Virtue |

Hierocles of Alexandria NULL

We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice.

Character | Evil | Fear |

William James

Our thought, incessantly deciding, among many things of a kind, which ones for it shall be realities, here chooses one of many possible selves or characters, and forthwith reckons it no shame to fail in any of those not adopted expressly as its own.

Character | Shame | Thought |

Anna Jameson

In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

Beginning | Character | Ends | Evil | Fanaticism | Fear | Religion | Wickedness |

Thomas Jefferson

Men are naturally divided into two parties: (1) those who fear and distrust the people... (2) those who identify themselves with people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider than as the most honest and safe.

Character | Confidence | Distrust | Fear | Men | People | Safe |

E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe

People tolerate those they fear further than those they love.

Character | Fear | Love | People |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

If you live in a fearful state, there will always be something of which to be afraid... The final overcoming of fear is in the realization that the presence of god is a great safety net under you at all times. There is a part of you which can never be afraid.

Character | Fear | God | Will | God |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Faith is a pre-condition of all systematic knowing, all purposive doing and all decent living. Societies are held together, not primarily by the fear of the many for the coercive power of the few, but by a widespread faith in the other fellow’s decency.

Character | Faith | Fear | Knowing | Power |

Anna Jameson

In every mind where there is a strong tendency to fear there is a strong capacity to hate. Those who dwell in fear dwell next door to hate; and I think it is the cowardice of women which makes them such intense haters.

Capacity | Character | Cowardice | Fear | Hate | Mind | Think |

John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

Fear is the energy to do our best in a new situation. Guilt is the energy for personal change. Unworthiness keeps us on track. Hurt feelings remind us how much we care. Anger is the energy for change. Discouragement reveals our courage.

Anger | Care | Change | Character | Courage | Energy | Fear | Feelings | Guilt |