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

Bachya Ibn Pekudah

The earth we live on is so small that even if someone was honored by everyone on our planet it is still insignificant. Also, a person’s lifetime is so short that even if he received honor and approval his entire life, it is so short in comparison with eternity. This is the ultimate success an approval-seeker can hope for, but the reality is that even if you spend you entire life trying to win the approval of others, only a small number of people will know and approve of you. The approval you do gain lasts a very short time and is soon forgotten as if it never was.

Character | Earth | Eternity | Honor | Hope | Life | Life | People | Reality | Success | Time | Will | Approval |

Alden C. Palmer

We are not put here on earth to play around. There is work to be done. There are responsibilities to be met. Humanity needs the abilities of every man and woman.

Character | Earth | Humanity | Man | Play | Woman | Work |

Rosa Parks

I believe we are here on earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place... Life is to be lived to its fullest so that death is just another chapter. Memories of our lives, our works and our deeds will continue in others.

Better | Character | Death | Deeds | Earth | Life | Life | Will | World | Deeds |

Mary Lou Retton

We are each put on this earth to make a particular contribution to humanity... Although God, the Almighty, has a plan for every one of us, He gives us choices. It is our responsibility to make the best of those choices in order to achieve our ultimate purpose.

Character | Earth | God | Humanity | Order | Plan | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

To serve God is not to pass our lives on our knees in prayer; it is to discharge on earth those obligations which our duty requires.

Character | Duty | Earth | God | Prayer | God |

Phyllis V. Schlemmer and Dalden Jenkins

Our bodies and egos are vehicles by which we can access the experience of physical living. As a key ingredient in an automobile is its driver, so the key ingredient in a person is soul. Without active alignment to soul - a person is lost - the fundamental meaning of life is missing. Planet Earth is a sort of “soul-field”, a body of experience with a characteristic flavor, which individual souls enter to learn, evolve and serve. Perhaps it is a Hall of Mirrors at a fairground, where we see ourselves reflected, expanded and compressed in so many different ways.

Body | Character | Earth | Experience | Individual | Life | Life | Meaning | Soul |

Samuel Smiles

The crown and glory of life is character. It is the noblest possession of a man, constituting a rank in itself, and estate in the general good will; dignifying every station, and exacting every position in society. It exercises a greater power than wealth and secures all the honor without the jealousies of fame. It carries with it an influence which always tells; for it is the result of proved honor, rectitude and consistency - qualities which, perhaps more than any others, command the general confidence and respect of mankind.

Character | Confidence | Consistency | Fame | Glory | Good | Honor | Influence | Life | Life | Man | Mankind | Position | Power | Qualities | Rank | Respect | Society | Wealth | Will | Respect |

Minot Judson Savage

Virtue is certainly the most noble and secure possession a man can have.

Character | Man | Virtue | Virtue |

Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

To be rich in admiration and free from envy; to rejoice greatly in the good of others; to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear possession in absence; these are the gifts of fortune which money cannot buy and without which money can buy nothing. He who has such a treasury of riches, being happy and valiant himself, in his own nature, will enjoy the universe as if it were his own estate; and help the man to whom he lends a hand to enjoy it with him.

Absence | Admiration | Character | Envy | Fortune | Generosity | Good | Happy | Heart | Love | Man | Money | Nature | Nothing | Riches | Universe | Will |

William Graham Sumner

Socialists are filled with the enthusiasm of equality... Equality of possession or of rights and equality before the law are diametrically opposed to each other. The object of equality before the law is to make the state entirely neutral.

Character | Enthusiasm | Equality | Law | Object | Rights |

Brooke Foss Westcott

No repentance on earth can undo the past.

Character | Earth | Past | Repentance |

Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all the others - his last breath.

Character |

James Waddel Alexander

There are pauses amidst study, and even pauses of seeming idleness, in which a process goes on which may be likened to the digestion of food. In those seasons of repose, the powers are gathering their strength for new efforts; as land which lies fallow recovers itself for tillage.

Idleness | Land | Repose | Strength | Study | Wisdom |