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

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

It is not the truth which a man possesses, or believes he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forth to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man. For it is not by the possession, by the search after truth that he enlarges his power, wherein alone consists his ever-increasing perfection. Possession makes one content, indolent, proud.

Character | Effort | Man | Perfection | Power | Search | Truth | Worth |

Israel Salanter Lipkin

Sincerity makes an untruth seem like a truth, while insincerity makes a truth seem like an untruth.

Character | Insincerity | Sincerity | Truth |

Walter Lippmann

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative in to an absolute.

Absolute | Character | People | Truth |

Gaius Cassius Longinus

There are three ways whereby a man may become great: being loyal, telling the truth and not thinking idle thoughts.

Character | Man | Thinking | Truth |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

The manner of giving shows the character of the giver more than the gift itself.

Character | Giving |

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

What education is to the individual man, revelation is to the whole human race... Education gives man nothing which he could not also get from within himself; it gives him that which he could get form within himself, only quicker and more easily. In the same way too, revelation gives nothing to the human race which reason could not arrive at on its own; only it has given, and still gives to it, the most important of these things sooner.

Character | Education | Human race | Important | Individual | Man | Nothing | Race | Reason | Revelation |

John Locke

We must consider what person stands for; - which, I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it: it being impossible for any one to perceive without perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions: and by this every one is to himself that which he calls self.

Character | Consciousness | Present | Reason | Reflection | Self | Taste | Thinking | Will |

Elias L. Magoon

Half a fact is a whole falsehood. He who gives the truth a false coloring by his false manner of telling it, is the worst of liars.

Character | Falsehood | Truth |

Walter Lippmann

We say that the truth will make us free. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change.

Change | Character | Truth | Will | Truths |

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 |

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I and myself. I feel myself - these are two distinct things. Our false philosophy is incorporated in our whole language; we cannot reason without, so to speak, reasoning wrongly. We overlook the fact that speaking, no matter of what, is itself a philosophy.

Character | Language | Philosophy | Reason |

John Locke

I think there cannot any one moral rule be proposed whereof a man may not justly demand a reason: which would be perfectly ridiculous and absurd if they were innate; or so much as self-evident, which every innate principle must needs be, and not need any proof to ascertain its truth, nor want any reason to gain its approbation.

Absurd | Character | Man | Need | Reason | Rule | Self | Truth | Think |

Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck

But it is not enough to possess a truth; it is essential that the truth should possess us.

Character | Enough | Truth |

Walter Lippmann

Those who use their reason do not reach the same conclusions as those who obey their prejudices.

Character | Reason |

John Locke

The most precious of all possessions, is power over ourselves; power to withstand trial, to bear suffering, to front danger; power over pleasure and pain; power to follow convictions, however resisted by menace and scorn; the power of calm reliance in scenes of darkness an storms. He that has not a mastery over his inclinations; he that knows not how to resist the importunity of present pleasure or pain, for the sake of what reason tells him is fit to be done, wants the true principle of virtue and industry, and is in danger of never being good for anything.

Character | Convictions | Danger | Darkness | Good | Industry | Pain | Pleasure | Possessions | Power | Present | Reason | Suffering | Virtue | Virtue | Wants | Danger |

James Russell Lowell

Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm, eloquence produces conviction for the moment; but it is only by truth to Nature and the everlasting institutions of mankind that those abiding influences are won that enlarge from generation to generation.

Character | Enthusiasm | Mankind | Nature | Truth |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

True worth is as inevitably discovered by the facial expression, as its opposite is sure to be clearly represented there. The human face is nature’s tablet, the truth is certainly written thereon.

Character | Nature | Truth | Worth |