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

Charles Curran

Life in this world is a very important reality, but it is not the ultimate reality... True growth in this world always calls for a dying to my own sinfulness, individualism and selfishness so that I might come closer to my true self in relationship to all others and to God. Thus, in the end, life and death are not diametrically opposed. Life involves a dying and dying is a way of life.

Character | Death | God | Growth | Important | Life | Life | Reality | Relationship | Self | Selfishness | World |

Everett Dirksen, fully Everett McKinley Dirksen

The mind is no match with the heart in persuasion; constitutionality is no match with compassion.

Character | Compassion | Heart | Mind | Persuasion |

Tyron Edwards

Indolence is the dry rot of even a good mind and a good character; the practical uselessness of both. It is the waste of what might be a happy and useful life.

Character | Good | Happy | Indolence | Life | Life | Mind | Waste |

Edicts of Ashoka NULL

He who does reverence to his own sect, while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own, with intent to enhance the glory of his own sect, in reality by such conduct inflicts the severest injury on his own sect. Concord therefore is meritorious, to wit, hearkening and hearkening willingly to the Law of Piety, as accepted by other people.

Character | Conduct | Glory | Law | People | Piety | Reality | Reverence | Wit |

Benjamin Franklin

To the generous mind the heaviest debt is that of gratitude, when it is not in our power to repay it.

Character | Debt | Gratitude | Mind | Power |

James William Fulbright

Of all the animals on earth, man has shown himself to be the most cruel and brutal. He is the only animal that will create instruments of death for his own destruction. Man is the only animal on all the earth that has ever been known to burn its young as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of some imaginary deity. He is the only one that will build homes, towns, and cities at such a cost in sacrifice and suffering and turn around and destroy them in war.

Character | Cost | Death | Destroy | Earth | Man | Sacrifice | Suffering | War | Will |

Henry Fielding

Though we may sometimes unintentionally bestow our beneficence on the unworthy, it does not take from the merit of the act. For charity doth not adopt the vices of its objects.

Character | Charity | Merit |

Benjamin Franklin

Righteousness, or justice, is, undoubtedly of all the virtues, the surest foundation on which to create and establish a new state. But there are two nobler virtues, industry and frugality, which tend more to increase the wealth, power and grandeur of the community, than all the others without them.

Character | Frugality | Industry | Justice | Power | Righteousness | Wealth |

Madame Émile de Girardin, Delphine de Girardin, née Gay

Ennui is the rust of the mind born of idleness. It is unused tools that corrode.

Character | Ennui | Idleness | Mind |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He who serves the public is a poor animal; he worries himself to death and no one thanks him for it.

Character | Death | Public | Wisdom |

William Feather

Only the man who can impose discipline on himself is fit to discipline others or can impose discipline on others.

Character | Discipline | Man |

Owen Feltham

Praise has different effects, according to the mind it meets with; it makes a wise man modest, but a fool more arrogant, turning his weak brain giddy.

Character | Man | Mind | Praise | Wise |

Henry Fielding

Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others concerned with him have done evil! If a man has acted right, he has done well, though alone; if wrong, the sanction of all mankind will not justify him.

Character | Evil | Good | Justify | Man | Mankind | Right | Will | Wrong |

E. M. Forster, fully Edward Morgan Forster

Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.

Character | Death | Man |

Benjamin Franklin

Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.

Character | Search |

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a.k.a. Charlotte Anna (nee Perkins), Charlotte Perkins Stetson

[Suicide note] - Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or 'broken heart' is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.

Character | Death | Grief | Heart | Life | Life | Misfortune | Pain | Power | Rights | Service | Suicide | Usefulness |