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

Bias NULL

It is better to decide between our enemies than our friends; for one of our friends will most likely become our enemy; but on the other hand, one of your enemies will probably become your friend.

Better | Character | Enemy | Friend | Will | Friends |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility; it is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are neighborhoods where it rages like a pest; churches are split in pieces by it, and neighbors made enemies for life. Let the young avoid or cure it while they may.

Business | Character | Dirty | Life | Life | Malice |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

Character | Children | Curiosity | Intelligence | Intolerance | Ruthlessness | Vision |

Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL

Five great enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

Ambition | Anger | Avarice | Character | Envy | Peace | Pride |

Philemon NULL

Comparisons make enemies of our friends.

Character |

Richard Whately

Those who get through the world without enemies are commonly three classes: the supple, the adroit, the phlegmatic. The leaden rule surmounts obstacles by yielding to them; the oiled wheel escapes friction; the cotton sack escapes damage by its impenetrable elasticity.

Character | Rule | World | Yielding |

Antisthenes NULL

Observe your enemies for they first find out your faults.

Wisdom |

Alfred Duggan

If a conference lasts a long time, it must end in peace; no one can keep on defying his enemies all day.

Day | Peace | Time | Wisdom |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

A religion, even if it calls itself the religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it. Fundamentally, indeed, every religion is in this same way a religion of love for all those whom it embraces; while cruelty and intolerance towards those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion.

Cruelty | Intolerance | Love | Religion | Wisdom | Cruelty |

Jack Holland

Gossip is always a personal confession of malice or imbecility; it is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are neighborhoods where it rages like a pest; churches are split in pieces by it, and neighbor made enemies for life. Let the young avoid or cure it while they may.

Business | Dirty | Life | Life | Malice | Wisdom |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

We are not only made in God’s image, but that we are made to image God - to reflect His freedom, joy, compassion and peace in our lives... When religion becomes reduced to an outward observation of rules and ceremonies and an intolerance toward the beliefs of others, we are mistaking the oyster for the pearl. The oyster is certainly valuable, but it is of infinitely greater value when it promotes the growth of the pearl... We cannot reason our way back to the roots of religion. We cannot trap God in stale dogmas or narrow creeds. Our purpose is to make religion a continuous living experience, to lead us toward a resurrection not of the dead but of the living who are dead to their own truth. Then religion becomes a thread that can both link us to the past and guide us to our future.

Compassion | Experience | Freedom | Future | God | Growth | Intolerance | Joy | Observation | Past | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Religion | Truth | Wisdom | God | Value |

Ludwig Lewisohn

Liberty is a living thing that passes from one generation to the next... The greatest enemy of a living thing is not its enemies but its friends who wish to cling to its antiquated form.

Enemy | Liberty | Wisdom | Friends |

Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

Nothing more assimilates a man to a bast than living among freedmen, himself a slave. Such people as these are natural enemies of society; and their number must be dangerous.

Man | Nothing | People | Society | Wisdom |

Thomas Paine

It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.

Maxims | Reason | Wisdom |

Donn Piatt

The man who has no enemies has no following.

Man | Wisdom |

Alexander Pope

Get your enemies to read your works in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your second self that he will judge too like you.

Friend | Order | Self | Will | Wisdom |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

War... is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and State, and individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders. Finally, each State can have for enemies only other States, and not men.

Man | Men | War | Wisdom |