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

William Newton Clarke

If I can not do great things, I can do small things in a great way.

Character |

Hugh C. Cameron

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

Character | Events | Ideas | People |

Richard Cecil

We are too fond of our own will; we want to be doing what we fancy mighty things: but the great point is to do small things, when called to them, in a right spirit.

Character | Right | Spirit | Will |

Henry Clay

In all the affairs of human life, social as well as political, I have remarked that courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest to the grateful and appreciating heart.

Character | Heart | Life | Life |

Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy; of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

Action | Character | Enemy | Friend | Thought | Thought |

Henry Van Dyke, fully Henry Jackson Van Dyke

A clean and sensitive conscience, a steadfast and scrupulous integrity in small things as well as great, is the most valuable of all possessions, to a nation as to an individual.

Character | Conscience | Individual | Integrity | Possessions |

Friedrich Engels

Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives or systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves - two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject.

Capacity | Character | Ends | Existence | Freedom | Good | Knowledge | Means | Men | Nature | Nothing | Reality | Thought | Will | Work | Govern | Thought |

Humphry Davy, fully Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindnesses and small obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart, and secure comfort.

Character | Comfort | Heart | Life | Life | Little |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

When working on improving yourself, it is easy to become discouraged because you do not see sufficient progress. Keep trying and do not give up. Every small amount of improvement is a success.

Character | Improvement | Progress | Success |

Tyron Edwards

Deviation from either truth or duty is a downward path, and none can say where the descent will end. "He that despiseth small things shall fall little by little."

Character | Deviation | Duty | Little | Truth | Will |

George Crabbe

How often do we sigh for opportunities of doing good, whist we neglect the openings of Providence in little things, which would frequently lead to the accomplishment of most important usefulness!... Good is done by degrees. However small in proportion the benefits which follow individual attempts to do good, a great deal may thus be accomplished by perseverance, even in the midst of discouragements and disappointments.

Accomplishment | Character | Good | Important | Individual | Little | Neglect | Perseverance | Providence | Usefulness |

Dubner Magid, name for Rabbi Jacob ben wolf Krantz

When a person has a large amount of any pleasure, he becomes accustomed to it and no longer feels enjoyment. If, however, a person is only able to obtain a small amount, he greatly appreciates it.

Character | Enjoyment | Pleasure |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the grief of one who falls from the serene activity into the absorbing soul wasting struggle.

Character | Grief | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Soul | Struggle | Thought | Thought | Understand |

Helen Gahagan Douglas

Character isn’t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains.

Action | Anger | Character | Fear | Hate | Mind | Self | Thought | Thought |

Charles W. Eliot

Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful, and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only, you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.

Character | Happy | Thought | Usefulness | Think | Thought |

Tyron Edwards

We never reach our ideals, whether of mental or moral improvement, but the thought of them shows us our deficiencies, and spurs us on to higher and better things.

Better | Character | Ideals | Improvement | Thought | Thought |

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 |

Albert Einstein

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

Character | Important | Truth | Wisdom |