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

Henry Christopher "H.C." Bailey

Indecision and hesitation are the weakness of a careful nature always intent on the saving of face and losing it thereby.

Character | Indecision | Nature | Weakness |

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

It was our belief that the love of possessions is a weakness to be overcome. Its appeal is to the material part, and if allowed its way, it will in time disturb one’s spiritual balance. Therefore, children must early learn the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving. If a child is inclined to be grasping, or to cling to any of his or her little possessions, legends are related about the contempt and disgrace falling upon the ungenerous and mean person... The Indians in their simplicity literally give away all that they have - to relatives, to guests of other tribes or clans, but above all to the poor and the aged, from whom they can hope for no return.

Balance | Beauty | Belief | Character | Children | Contempt | Disgrace | Generosity | Giving | Guests | Hope | Legends | Little | Love | Possessions | Simplicity | Taste | Time | Weakness | Will | Beauty | Child | Happiness | Learn |

Zane Grey Orig. name Pearl Grey

To bear up under loss; to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief; to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close; to resist disease and evil men and base instincts; to hate hate and to love love; to go on when it would seem good to die; to look up with unquenchable faith in something ever more about to be - that is what any man can do, and be great.

Anger | Bitterness | Character | Defeat | Disease | Evil | Faith | Good | Grief | Hate | Love | Man | Men | Smile | Tears | Weakness |

James Russell Lowell

Pride and weakness are Siamese twins.

Character | Pride | Weakness |

Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL

Lust is an enemy to the purse, a foe to the person, a canker to the mind, a corrosive to the conscience, a weakness of the wit, a besotter of the senses, and finally a mortal bane to all the body.

Body | Character | Conscience | Enemy | Lust | Mind | Mortal | Weakness | Wit |

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 |

Sydney Smith

It is the calling of great men, not so much to preach new truths, as to rescue from oblivion those old truths which it is our wisdom to remember and our weakness to forget.

Character | Men | Oblivion | Weakness | Wisdom | Old | Truths |

Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more. A straw or a feather sustains itself long in the air.

Character | Strength | Weakness |

Beaumont and Fletcher, Francis Beaumont (c.1585-1614) and John Fletcher

Nothing is a misery, unless our weakness apprehend it so; we cannot be more faithful to ourselves, in anything that’s manly, than to make ill-fortune as contemptible to us as it makes us to others.

Fortune | Nothing | Weakness | Wisdom |

Honoré de Balzac

The hardest sentiment to tolerate is pity, especially when it's deserved. Hatred is a tonic, it vitalizes us, it inspires vengeance, but pity deadens, it makes our weakness weaker.

Pity | Sentiment | Vengeance | Weakness | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

In the world there are only two ways of raising one’s self, either by one’s own industry or by the weakness of others.

Industry | Self | Weakness | Wisdom | World |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Wherever progress ends, decline in variably begins; but remember that the healthful progress of society is like the natural life of man - it consists in the gradual and harmonious development of all its constitutional powers, all its component parts, and you introduce weakness and disease into the whole system whether you attempt to stint or to force its growth.

Disease | Ends | Force | Growth | Life | Life | Man | Progress | Society | System | Weakness | Wisdom | Society |

Tyron Edwards

He that resolves upon any great and good end, has, by the very resolution, scaled the chief barrier to it. He will find such resolution removing difficulties, searching out or making means, giving courage for despondency, and strength for weakness and like the star to the wise men of old, ever guiding him nearer and nearer to perfection.

Courage | Despondency | Giving | Good | Means | Men | Perfection | Resolution | Strength | Weakness | Will | Wisdom | Wise |

Horace Fletcher, nicknamed "The Great Masticator"

The underlying cause of all weakness and unhappiness is man has always been, and still is, weak habit-of-thought.

Cause | Habit | Man | Thought | Unhappiness | Weakness | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Without my work in natural science I should never have known human beings as they really are. In no other activity can one come so close to direct perception and clear thought, or realize so fully the errors of the senses, the mistakes of the intellect, the weakness and greatnesses of human character.

Character | Perception | Science | Thought | Weakness | Wisdom | Work |

David Hume

Never speak by superlatives; for in so doing you will be likely to wound either truth or prudence. Exaggeration is neither thoughtful, wise, nor safe. It is a proof of the weakness of the understanding, or the want of discernment of him that utters it, so that even when he speaks the truth, he soon finds it is received with partial, or even utter disbelief.

Disbelief | Discernment | Exaggeration | Prudence | Prudence | Safe | Truth | Understanding | Weakness | Will | Wisdom | Wise |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The aging man of the middle twentieth century lives, not in the public world of atomic physics and conflicting ideologies, of welfare states and supersonic speed, but in his strictly private universe of physical weakness and mental decay.

Man | Public | Universe | Weakness | Wisdom | World |