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

Theodore Parker

Temperance is corporal piety; it is the preservation of divine order in the body.

Body | Character | Order | Piety |

William Penn

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.

Body | Character | Mind | Rest | Silence | Spirit |

Max Picard

Silence is man's centre... Today silence is malfunctioning noise.

Character | Man | Noise | Silence | Wisdom |

Gretta Palmer

Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.

Character | Effort | Happy | Wisdom |

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

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to save it.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Order | Right | Risk |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after life.

Cause | Character | Doubt | Harmony | Immortality | Life | Life | Oppression | Order | Soul | World |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Luxury is a remedy much worse than the disease it sets up to cure; or rather it is in itself the greatness of all evils; for every State, great or small: for, in order to maintain all the servants and vagabonds it creates, it brings oppression and ruin on the citizen and the laborer; it is like those scorching winds, which, covering the trees and plants with their devouring insects, deprive useful animals of their subsistence and spread famine and death wherever they blow.

Character | Death | Disease | Greatness | Luxury | Oppression | Order |

Publius Syrus

Meet an accusation with silence and you make it sharper.

Character | Silence |

James R. Quirk

The value of silence in art is its stimulation to the imagination.

Art | Character | Imagination | Silence | Art | Value |

Alexander Smith

When a men is happy, every effort to express his happiness mars its completeness.

Character | Effort | Happy | Men | Happiness |

Albert Schweitzer

Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live unreflectively and begins to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to raise it to its true value. To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will to live.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Order | Reverence | Will |

Shimon HaTzaddik

For his entire life he was in the company of wise men and Of all the things beneficial to one’s body, silence is the best. [paraphrase]

Body | Character | Life | Life | Men | Silence | Wise |

Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley

The true order of learning should be: first, what is necessary; second, what is useful, and third, what is ornamental. To reverse this arrangement is like beginning to build at the top of an edifice.

Beginning | Character | Learning | Order |

Samuel Smiles

Good character is human nature in its best form. It is moral order embodied in the individual. Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well governed state they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities which, in the main, rule the world.

Character | Conscience | Good | Human nature | Individual | Men | Nature | Order | Power | Qualities | Rule | Society | World |

William Graham Sumner

It is taught that willing and voluntary service to others is the highest duty and glory in human life... The men of talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the works of art. The benefit and enjoyment go to the whole. There are those who joyfully order their own lives so that they may serve the welfare of mankind.

Art | Books | Character | Duty | Enjoyment | Glory | Life | Life | Mankind | Men | Order | Rest | Service | Talent |