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

Arnold Geulincx

My will does not produce the motive power to move my limbs. Rather, he who imparted motion to matter, and ordained its laws, shaped my will also; he thus joined together two utterly different things - the movement of matter and the decision of my will in such a way that whenever my will desires some action, the desired bodily movement will occur and vice versa, without there being any causation involved, or any influence of the one upon the other. It is just as if there were two clocks appropriately adjusted with reference to each other and the time of day in such a way that when one struck the hour the other immediately did likewise.

Action | Character | Day | Decision | Influence | Power | Time | Will | Vice |

Frank Bunker Gilberth, Sr.

We're worn into grooves by Time - by our habits. In the end, these grooves are going to show whether we've been second rate or champions, each in his way in dispatching the affairs of every day. By choosing our habits, we determine the grooves into which Time will wear us; and these grooves that enrich our lives and make for ease of mind, peace, happiness - achievement.

Achievement | Character | Day | Mind | Peace | Time | Will | Happiness |

Thomas Hobbes

Continual success in obtaining those things which a man form time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call felicity; I mean the felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Character | Desire | Fear | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mind | Sense | Success | Time | Tranquility |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

A man who feels that his religion is a slavery has not begun to comprehend the real nature of religion.

Character | Man | Nature | Religion | Slavery |

Fenwicke Lindsay Holmes

Every time you give another a "piece of your mind," you add to your own vacuum.

Character | Mind | Time |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

As a wise man in time of peace prepares for war.

Character | Man | Peace | Time | War | Wise |

Robert Hall

Neutrality in things good or evil is both odious and prejudicial; but in matters of an indifferent nature is safe and commendable. Herein taking of parts maketh sides, and breaketh unity. In an unjust cause of separation, he that favoreth both parts may perhaps have least love of either side, but hath most charity in himself.

Cause | Character | Charity | Evil | Good | Love | Nature | Neutrality | Safe | Unity |

Henry Home, Lord Kames

No man ever did a designed injury to another, but at the same time he did a greater to himself.

Character | Man | Time |

W. T. Grant, fully William Thomas Grant

It must be obvious to those who take the time to look at human life that its greatest values lie not in getting things, but in doing them, in doing them together, in all working toward a common aim, in the experience of comradeship, of warmhearted 100% human life.

Character | Experience | Life | Life | Time |

Richard Hill

Life is but one continual course of instruction. The hand of the parent writes on the heart of the child the first faint characters which time deepens into strength so that nothing can efface them.

Character | Heart | Life | Life | Nothing | Strength | Time | Child | Parent |

Jimmy Hoffa

Not until the game is over and all of the chips have been counted can you calculate a man’s winnings or losses. And not until he stands against the perspective of history can you correctly measure his stature.

Character | History | Man |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable.

Character | Impatience | Men | People | Time | Unhappiness |

Aaron Hill

Shun fear, it is the ague of the soul! a passion man created for himself - for sure that cramp of nature could not dwell in the warm realms of glory.

Character | Fear | Glory | Man | Nature | Passion | Soul |

Roy M. Goodman

Good nature is the very air of a good mind; the sign of a large and generous soul, and the peculiar soil in which virtue prospers.

Character | Good nature | Good | Mind | Nature | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |

Thomas Hobbes

Our nature is inseparable from desires, and the very word “desire” (the craving for something not possessed) implies that our present felicity is not complete.

Character | Desire | Nature | Present |

Stephan Jay Gould

The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.

Character | Human nature | Kindness | Nature |

Robert Hall

Infidelity and faith look both through the perspective glass, but at contrary ends. Infidelity looks through the wrong end of the glass; and, therefore, sees those objects near which are afar off, and makes great things little - diminishing the greatest spiritual blessings, and removing far from us threatened evils. Faith looks at the right end, and brings the blessings that are far off in time close to our eye, and multiplies God’s mercies, which, in a distance, lost their greatness.

Blessings | Character | Ends | Faith | God | Greatness | Little | Looks | Right | Time | Wrong | Infidelity |

Francis Bret Harte

Never a tear bedims the eye that time and patience will not dry.

Character | Patience | Time | Will |

Adam Hochschild

Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.

Character | Time | Work |

William James

What may be called “club-opinion” is one of the very strongest forces in life. The thief must not steal from other thieves; the gambler must pay his gambling-debts, though he pay no other debts in the world. The code of honor of fashionable society has throughout history been full of permissions as well as of vetoes, the only reason for following either of which is that so we best serve one of our social selves.

Character | History | Honor | Life | Life | Opinion | Reason | Society | World | Society | Following |