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

Michael Murphy

Exceptional abilities develop most fully in cultures that prize them... no aspect of human nature is immune to social influence.

Character | Human nature | Influence | Nature |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The truth is that it is contrary to the nature of love if it is not violent, and contrary to the nature of violence if it is constant.

Character | Love | Nature | Truth |

Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?

Character | Defects | Human nature | Men | Nature | Philosophy |

Alden C. Palmer

If one lives with Nature a little while, he soon recognizes the harmony of creation... Each of us is, therefore, an instrument of God. When one thinks of his humble self in this light, life takes on a more profound meaning.

Character | God | Harmony | Life | Life | Light | Little | Meaning | Nature | Self |

Robert M. Pirsig

Programmes of a political nature are important and products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outside from there.

Character | Heart | Important | Individual | Nature | Right | Work | World |

Jean-Jacques "J.J." Olier

Revelations are the aberration of faith; they are an amusement that spoils simplicity in relation to God, that embarrasses the soul and makes it swerve from its directness in relation to God. They distract the soul and occupy it with others than God.

Character | Faith | God | Simplicity | Soul |

Alexander Pope

Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but it impairs what it would improve.

Beauty | Character | Nature |

Nisargadatta Maharaj, fully Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, born Maruti Shivrampant Kambli

By watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.

Acceptance | Attention | Awareness | Character | Consciousness | Freedom | Intelligence | Intention | Life | Life | Mind | Mother | Nature | Understanding | Work | Understand |

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 |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The fundamental principle of all morals, on the basis of which I have reasoned in all my writings... is that man is naturally good, loving justice and order; that there is absolutely no original perversity in the human heart, and that the first movements of nature are always right.

Character | Good | Heart | Justice | Man | Nature | Order | Right |

Sydney Smith

Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

Character | Good nature | Good | Nature | Sense |

Lewis Schwellenbach, fully Lewis Baxter Schwellenbach

Every right has its responsibilities. Like the right itself, these responsibilities stem from no man-made law, but from the very nature of man and society. The security, progress and welfare of one group is measured finally in the security, progress and welfare of all mankind.

Character | Man | Mankind | Nature | Progress | Right | Security |

Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

Self-expression can be wrong as well as right... When self-expression is identified with irrational surrender to lower instincts, it ends by making the person a slave to those passions. Self-denial is not a renunciation of freedom; it is rather the taming of what is savage and base in our nature for what is higher and better. It is a release from imprisonment by our lusts and passions.

Better | Character | Ends | Freedom | Nature | Right | Self | Self-denial | Surrender | Wrong |