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

Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch, aka Maggid of Mezeritch

I cannot teach you the ten principles of service. But a little child and a thief can show you what they are. From the child you can learn three things: He is merry for no particular reason; never for a moment is he idle; when he needs something, he demands it vigorously. The thief can instruct you in seven things: He does his service by night; if he does not finish what he has set out to do, in one night, he devotes the next night to it; he and those who work with him love one another; he risks his life for small gains; what he takes has so little value for him that he gives it up for a very small coin; he endures blows and hardship, and it matters nothing to him; he likes his trade and would not exchange it for any other.

Character | Life | Life | Little | Love | Nothing | Principles | Reason | Service | Teach | Work | Child | Learn | Value |

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.

Character | Integrity | Money | Service | Sincerity |

Benjamin Franklin

In dealings between man and man, truth, sincerity and integrity are of the utmost importance to the felicity of life.

Character | Integrity | Life | Life | Man | Sincerity | Truth |

Ellen Goodman

The adult world is... built on the shifting grounds of friendship and competition. The double message of this society and economy are to get along and get ahead. We want our children to fit in and to stand out. We rarely address the conflict between these goals.

Character | Children | Competition | Goals | Society | World | Friendship | Society |

James Russell Lowell

The only conclusive evidence of a man’s sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else, are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.

Character | Evidence | Life | Life | Man | Money | Practice | Sincerity | Truth | Words |

Grady Poulard

The measure of a man is not determined by his show of outward strength or the volume of his voice or the thunder of his action. It is to be seen rather in terms of the strength of his inner self in terms of the nature and depth of his commitments the sincerity of his purpose and his willingness to continue "growing up."

Action | Character | Man | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Sincerity | Strength |

Tzu-Ssu or Zisi, born Kong Ji NULL

Sincerity is the fulfillment of our own nature, and to arrive at it we need only follow our true self. Sincerity is the beginning and end of existence; without it, nothing can endure. Therefore the mature person values sincerity above all things.

Beginning | Character | Existence | Fulfillment | Nature | Need | Nothing | Self | Sincerity |

John H. Vincent, fully John Heyl Vincent

I will this day try to live a simple, sincere, and serene life; repelling promptly every thought of discontent, anxiety, discouragement, impurity, and self-seeking; cultivating cheerfulness, magnanimity, charity, and the habit of holy silence; exercising economy in expenditure, carefulness in conversation, diligence in appointed service, fidelity to every trust, and a childlike trust in God.

Anxiety | Anxiety | Character | Charity | Cheerfulness | Conversation | Day | Diligence | Discontent | Fidelity | God | Habit | Life | Life | Magnanimity | Self | Service | Silence | Thought | Trust | Will | Thought |

Babylonian Talmud

He who does not teach his son a trade teaches him as it were to become a robber.

Teach | Wisdom |

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

Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus; it move stones and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes not victories without it.

Enthusiasm | Genius | Nothing | Sincerity | Truth | Wisdom |

Evelyn Mills Duvall

Parents represent the last stand of the amateur. Every other trade and profession has developed standards, has required study and practice and licensing before releasing the students into his work. Only one profession remains untutored and untrained -- the bearing and rearing of our children.

Children | Parents | Practice | Study | Wisdom | Work |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

God, who is liberal in all his other gifts, shows us, by the wise economy of his providence, how circumspect we ought to be in the management of our time, for he never gives us two moments together.

God | Providence | Time | Wisdom | Wise |

Erich Heller

Whether a prophet is true or false does not depend upon the correctness of his predictions. It depends upon the purity and sincerity of his concern for the things threatened by human sin and divine anger. Indeed his predictions are the more likely to be correct, the less he is a true prophet and the more affinities he has within himself to the destructive tendencies of his age.

Age | Anger | Correctness | Purity | Sin | Sincerity | Wisdom |

Janet Kauffman

If we care about the land, it will be necessary to redefine whole economies, not just the farm economy. A complex, solid economy could certainly grow around a policy of cooperation with natural environments. Why haven’t we proposed such policies - on a grand a scale as national defense - when our own species is at stake?

Care | Cooperation | Defense | Land | Policy | Will | Wisdom |

James Russell Lowell

You may make everything else out of the passions of men except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into dogma.

Dogma | Men | Nothing | Sincerity | System | Will | Wisdom | Work |