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

James Beattie

Let us cherish sympathy. By attention and exercise it may be improved in every man. It prepares the mind for receiving the impressions of virtue; and without it there can be no true politeness. Nothing is more odious than that insensibility which wraps a man up in himself and his own concerns, and prevents his being moved with either the joys or the sorrows of another.

Attention | Character | Man | Mind | Nothing | Sympathy | Virtue | Virtue |

Ahad HaAm, pen name, born Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg

Whoever sets out to persuade men to accept a new idea, or one which seems to be new, not just as an idea, but as a truth that is felt, should know beforehand that the human mind is not a blank sheet, on which one an write with ease, and should not therefore grieve or despair when he finds that people do not pay attention to him.

Attention | Character | Despair | Men | Mind | People | Truth |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

There is no state of mind, however simple, which does not change every moment.

Change | Character | Mind | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Repose without stagnation is the state most favorable to happiness. "The great felicity of life," says Seneca, "is to be without perturbations."

Character | Life | Life | Repose |

Stephan Bodian

Give up the notion that there is a final state to attain. Spiritual life consists of ongoing practice undertaken as a lifetime work. This realization breeds humility, especially when we realize that in our initial infatuation with enlightenment, we underestimate the amount of inner work necessary to free us from our addictive patterns of thought and behavior.

Behavior | Character | Enlightenment | Humility | Life | Life | Practice | Thought | Work | Thought |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

The trouble of the many and various aims of mortal men bring them much care, and herein they go forward by different paths but strive to reach one end, which is happiness. And that good is that, to which if any man attain, he can desire nothing further... Happiness is a state which is made perfect by the union of all good things. This end all men seek to reach, as I said, though by different paths. For there is implanted by nature in the minds of men a desire for the true good; but error leads them astray towards false goods by wrong paths.

Aims | Care | Character | Desire | Error | Good | Man | Men | Mortal | Nature | Nothing | Wrong | Trouble | Happiness |

Carl Victor de Bonstetten

To speak well supposes a habit of attention which shows itself in the thought; by language we learn to think and above all to develop thought.

Attention | Character | Habit | Language | Thought | Wisdom | Learn | Think |

Albert Einstein

If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.

Character | Fear | Insecurity | Men | Pain | Surrender |

Philip Doddridge

He is the wisest and happiest man who, by constant attention of thought discovers the greatest opportunity of doing good, and breaks through every opposition that he may improve these opportunities.

Attention | Character | Good | Man | Opportunity | Opposition | Thought | Thought |

J. L. M. Curry, fully Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry

A state to prosper, must be built on foundations of moral character, and, this character is the principal element of its strength, and the only guaranty of its permanence and prosperity.

Character | Prosperity | Strength |

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

There are two principal points of attention necessary for the preservation of this constant spirit of prayer which unites us with God; we must continually seek to cherish it, and we must avoid everything that tends to make us lose it.

Attention | Character | God | Prayer | Spirit |

Henry Fielding

One situation only of the married state is excluded from pleasure: and that is, a state of indifference.

Character | Indifference | Pleasure |

Robert Hall

In the power of fixing the attention lies the most precious of the intellectual habits.

Attention | Character | Power |

Avraham Grodzinski

Habit has great power. We can become used to almost everything. We can become so used to a life of suffering that we are no longer aware that our suffering is not the way life should be lived. This tendency to lack a feeling of suffering is the biggest obstacle to becoming elevated through suffering. Since we do not feel the suffering, we do not pay attention to it and do not hear its message.. To overcome this, we must obtain an awareness that whenever things are not as they should be it is a message that we should improve ourselves in some area.

Attention | Awareness | Character | Habit | Life | Life | Power | Suffering | Awareness | Obstacle |

Avraham Grodzinski

There are usually no benefits from becoming angry at others. Your anger does not help you and the subject of your anger usually pays less attention to what you are saying than if you would have said it tactfully and patiently. Becoming angry merely causes harm to your health and makes you feel miserable.

Anger | Attention | Character | Harm | Health |

Claude-Adrien Helvétius

The men of sense, the idols of the shallow, are very inferior to the men of passions. It is the strong passions which, rescuing us from sloth, impart to us that continuous and earnest attention necessary to great attention.

Attention | Character | Men | Sense | Sloth |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Mortifications have their reward in a state of consciousness that corresponds, on a lower level, to spiritual beatitude. The artist - and the philosopher and the man of science are also artists - knows the bliss of aesthetic contemplation, discovery and non-attached possession. The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods; but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough; there must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking feeling and fancying.

Action | Aesthetic | Character | Consciousness | Contemplation | Desire | Discovery | Emotions | Ends | Enough | Good | Imagination | Knowing | Man | Reward | Science | Thinking | Will | Discovery |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

When, in our pain, we turn our attention to life’s purpose, we take up pain as a thread through the labyrinth... But when we deny pain, we are denying life itself. When we flee from pain that we cannot escape, we are fleeing from an opportunity to grow.

Attention | Character | Life | Life | Opportunity | Pain | Purpose | Purpose |

Juan Ramón Jimenez, fully Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón

A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition.

Character | Man |