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

Richard Baxter

You will cast away your cards and dice when you find the sweetness of youthful learning.

Character | Learning | Will |

Francis Beaumont

A guilty conscience is a hell on earth, and points to one beyond.

Character | Conscience | Earth | Hell | Guilty |

Archibald Alison

There is no unmixed good in human affairs; the best principles, if pushed to excess, degenerate into fatal vices. Generosity is nearly allied to extravagance; charity itself may lead to ruin; the sternness of justice is but one step removed from the severity of oppression. It is the same in the political world; the tranquillity of despotism resembles the stagnation of the Dead Sea; the fever of innovation the tempests of the ocean It would seem as if, at particular periods, from causes inscrutable to human wisdom, a universal frenzy seizes mankind; reason, experience, prudence, are alike blinded; and the very classes who are to perish in the storm are the first to raise its fury.

Character | Charity | Excess | Experience | Extravagance | Fury | Generosity | Good | Innovation | Justice | Mankind | Oppression | Principles | Prudence | Prudence | Reason | Tranquility | Wisdom | World |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Do not consider anything for your interest which makes you break your word, quit your modesty, or inclines you to any practice which will not bear the light, or look the world in the face.

Character | Light | Modesty | Practice | Will | World |

H. W. Arnold

The worst bankrupt in the world is the man who has lost his enthusiasm. Let a man lose everything else in the world but his enthusiasm and he will come through again to success.

Character | Enthusiasm | Man | Success | Will | Wisdom | World |

Jacob Bohme, or Jacob Behmen or Jakob Böhme

Spiritual knowledge cannot be communicated from one intellect to another, but must be sought for in the spirit of God.

Character | God | Knowledge | Spirit | Intellect |

Charles Pierre Baudelaire

As a remedy against all ills - poverty, sickness, and melancholy - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work.

Character | Melancholy | Poverty | Work |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

The one thing worth living for is to keep one's soul pure.

Character | Soul | Wisdom | Worth |

S'rîmad Bhâgavatam, aka Bhâgavata Purâna or Bhāgavata

Learn to look with an equal eye upon all beings, seeing the one Self in all.

Character | Self |

Abaye NULL

Speak not one thing with the mouth and another with the heart.

Character | Heart |

Charles Francis Adams II

More than all, and above all Washington was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example.

Character | Control | Example | Influence | Men | Present | Self |

Richard Alleine

There may be some tenderness in the conscience and yet the will be a very stone; and as long as the will stands out, there is no broken heart.

Character | Conscience | Heart | Tenderness | Will |

Simeon ben Azai, sometimes Ben Azai

The reward of doing one duty is the power to do another.

Character | Duty | Power | Reward |

Saul Bellow

In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. In here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me?

Art | Character | Heart | Indignation | Love | Man | People | Power | Rest | Soul | Art |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

Instinct gave place temporarily to a system of habits, each one of which became contingent, their convergence of which became contingent, their convergence towards the preservation of society being alone necessary, and this necessity bringing back instinct with it. The necessity of the whole, felt behind the contingency of the parts, is what we call moral obligation in general - it being understood that the parts are contingent in the eyes of society only; to the individual, into whom society inculcates its habits, the part is as necessary as the whole.

Character | Individual | Instinct | Necessity | Obligation | Society | System | Society |

Thomas Adams

He that taught them all their tricks kept one to himself.

Character |