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

Nachman of Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Bratslav, Nachman from Uman NULL

You possess the ability to control your thoughts. Even if your thoughts wander, you can bring them back and focus on what you wish.

Ability | Character | Control | Focus |

Theodore T. Munger

Proverbs are but rules, and rules do not create character. They prescribe conduct, but do not furnish a full and proper motive. They are usually but half truths, and seldom contain the principle of the action they teach.

Action | Character | Conduct | Proverbs | Teach |

Plotinus NULL

To put Happiness in actions is to put it in things that are outside virtue and outside the Soul; for the Soul’s expression is not in action but in wisdom, in a contemplative operation within itself; and this, this alone, is Happiness.

Action | Character | Soul | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Happiness |

William Lyon Phelps

One of the chief reasons for success in life is the ability to maintain a daily interest in one's work, to have a chronic enthusiasm, to regard each day as important.

Ability | Character | Day | Enthusiasm | Important | Life | Life | Regard | Success | Work |

Leon Roth

Moral action is the meeting-place between the human and divine.

Action | Character |

Arthur Rimbaud, fully Jean-Nicolas-Arthur Rimbaud

I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain.”

Action | Character | Morality | Weakness |

Moshe Rosenstein, fully Moshe ben Chaim Rosenstein

A person who appreciates that the Almighty created everything in the world for his benefit is aware of the multitude of good things he has in the world. With this appreciation, no one considers himself poor in comparison to anyone else just because the other person has a little more than him. Even the poorest person in the world has many things for which to be thankful. Everyone has the ability to be in a state of happiness. Do not allow another person’s having more than you rob you of your happiness.

Ability | Appreciation | Character | Good | Little | World |

Louis Ruthenburg

The technical progress of industry has been a reflection of our ability to apply increasingly accurate methods of measurement to material things. The art of measuring psychological human dimensions is relatively undeveloped. To all of the complexities of management we must bring to bear infinite patience and persistence, consistency and complete sincerity.

Ability | Art | Character | Consistency | Industry | Patience | Persistence | Progress | Reflection | Sincerity | Art |

Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson

Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man's life.

Action | Character | Life | Life | Man | Serenity | Spirit |

Thomas Reid

If there be anything that can be called genius, it consists chiefly in ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind, till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides.

Ability | Attention | Character | Genius | Mind |

William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, fully Field Marshal Sir William Joseph "Bill" Slim

When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder.

Action | Character | Mind |

William Gilmore Simms

Better that we should err in action than wholly refuse to perform. The storm is so much better than the calm, as it declares the presence of a living principle. Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption also.

Action | Better | Character | Corruption | Death |