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

W. D. Ross, fully Sir William David Ross

No act is ever, in virtue of falling under some general description, necessarily actually right... moral acts often (as every one knows) and indeed always (on reflection we must admit) have different characteristics that tend to make them a the same time prima facie right and prima facie wrong; there is probably no act, for instance, which does good to anyone without doing harm to someone else, and vice versa.

Character | Good | Harm | Reflection | Right | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wrong | Vice |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

Character | Duty | Gratitude | Right |

Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

Freedom does not mean the right to do whatever we please, but rather to do whatever we ought... The right to do whatever we please reduces freedom to a physical power and forgets that freedom is a moral power.

Character | Freedom | Power | Right |

Samuel Smiles

The great highroad of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and the work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort.

Character | Effort | Right | Spirit | Success | Will | Work | Old |

Lewis Schwellenbach, fully Lewis Baxter Schwellenbach

Every right has its responsibilities. Like the right itself, these responsibilities stem from no man-made law, but from the very nature of man and society. The security, progress and welfare of one group is measured finally in the security, progress and welfare of all mankind.

Character | Man | Mankind | Nature | Progress | Right | Security |

Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

Every individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong.

Character | Contradiction | Individual | Right | Self | Wrong |

Francis Bowes Sayre

Religion isn’t yours firsthand until you doubt it right down to the ground.

Character | Doubt | Religion | Right |

Edward C. Simmons

The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right.

Character | Failure | Right | Success | Failure |

Binyamin Yehoshua Silver

How can you clarify if you do good deeds because they are right or merely to gain honor and approval? Ask yourself: “Would I do this if I were all alone and no one would ever find out about my good deed?”

Character | Deeds | Good | Honor | Right | Deeds |

Charles Simmons

No man has a right to do as he pleases, except when he pleases to do right.

Character | Man | Right |

William Temple, fully Archbishop William Temple

The right relation between prayer and conduct is not that conduct is supremely important and prayer may help it, but that prayer is supremely important and conduct tests it.

Character | Conduct | Important | Prayer | Right |

S.G. Tallentyre, nom de plume for Evelyn Beatrice Hall

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Character | Death | Right | Will |

Theophrastus NULL

Tactlessness is a pain-giving failure to hit upon the right moment.

Character | Failure | Giving | Pain | Right | Failure |