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

Owen Feltham

Works without faith are like a fish without water, it wants the element it should live in. A building without a basis cannot stand; faith is the foundation, and every good action is as a stone laid.

Action | Character | Faith | Good | Wants |

Immanual Hermann Fichte

Our system of thought and opinion, is often the only history of our heart. Men do not so much will according to their reason, as reason according to their will.

Character | Heart | History | Men | Opinion | Reason | System | Thought | Will | Thought |

Henry Giles

The silent influence of books, is a mighty power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them known only to those who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they yet set in action countless multitudes and change the order of nations.

Action | Books | Change | Character | Desire | Enthusiasm | Influence | Joy | Nations | Order | Power | Reading | Wisdom | World |

Owen Feltham

Contemplation is necessary to generate an object, but action must propagate it.

Action | Character | Contemplation | Object | Wisdom |

Lowell Fillmore

Those who think they have nothing to give should always remember that they can always give themselves, and that they can always render some kind of service even if it be nothing more than a few words of cheer.

Character | Nothing | Service | Words | Think |

Henry George

Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.

Action | Character | Right | Thought | Will | Wisdom |

Charles W. Garman

Whatever may be true of men’s creed, nothing is clearer than the fact that the personality and the sovereignty of God are not a large factor in the practical life and thought of our age.

Age | Character | Creed | God | Life | Life | Men | Nothing | Personality | Thought | God | Thought |

Jerome P. Fleishman

Do you know what real poverty is? It is never to have a big thought or a generous impulse.

Character | Impulse | Poverty | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Our best hope for the future is that the intellect - the scientific spirit, reason - should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind. The very nature of reason is a guarantee that it would not fail to concede to human emotions, and to all that is determined by them, the position to which they are entitled. But the common pressure exercised by such a domination of reason would prove to be the strongest unifying force among men, and would prepare the way for further unifications. Whatever, like the ban laid upon thought by religion, opposes such a development is a danger for the future of mankind.

Character | Danger | Emotions | Force | Future | Guarantee | Hope | Mankind | Men | Mind | Nature | Position | Reason | Religion | Spirit | Thought | Time | Danger | Intellect | Thought |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There are few who have at once thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows.

Action | Capacity | Character | Thought | Thought |

Arthur Guiterman

Good manners may in Seven Words be found: Forget Yourself and think of Those Around.

Character | Good | Manners | Words | Think |

Robert Hall

Let your words be few and digested, it is a shame for the tongue to cry the heart mercy, much more to cast itself upon the uncertain pardon of others’ ears.

Character | Heart | Mercy | Pardon | Shame | Words |

Madame Guyon, Jeanne Marie Bouvières de la Mothe Guyon

There are three kinds of silence. Silence from words is good, because inordinate speaking tends to evil. Silence, or rest from desires and passions is still better, because it promotes quietness of spirit. But the best of all is silence from unnecessary and wandering thoughts, because that is essential to internal recollection, and because it lays a foundation for a proper reputation and for silence in other respects.

Better | Character | Evil | Good | Reputation | Rest | Silence | Spirit | Words |

Heinrich Heine

Thought precedes action as lightning does thunder.

Action | Character | Thought | Wisdom |

N. Grou

A simple heart will love all that is most precious on earth, husband or wife, parent or child, brother or friend, without marring its singleness; external things will have no attraction save inasmuch as they lead souls to Him; all exaggeration or unreality, affection and falsehood must pass away from such a one, as the dews dry up before the sunshine. The single motive is to please God, and hence arises total indifference as to what others say and think, so that words and actions are perfectly simple and natural, as in his sight.

Character | Earth | Exaggeration | Falsehood | Friend | God | Heart | Husband | Indifference | Love | Wife | Will | Words | Parent |

Richard M. Hare, fully Richard Mervyn Hare

It is, most fundamentally, because moral judgments are universablizable that we can speak of moral thought as rational (to universalize is to give the reason); and their prescriptivity is very intimately connected with our freedom to form our own moral opinions (only those free to think and act need a prescriptive language).

Character | Freedom | Language | Need | Reason | Thought | Think | Thought |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

Words without action are the assassins of idealism.

Action | Character | Idealism | Words |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What is the true test of character, unless it be its progressive development in the bustle and turmoil, in the action and reaction of daily life?

Action | Character | Life | Life | Turmoil |

Hans Hoffman

A thing in itself never expresses anything. It is the relation between things that gives meaning to them and that formulates a thought. A thought functions only as a fragmentary part in the formulation of an idea.

Character | Meaning | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Gilbert L. Guffin

It is ever true that the life one lives speaks more loudly than the words one utters.

Character | Life | Life | Words |