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

Jeremy Collier

Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness. People that have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.

Character | Idleness | Nothing | People |

Robertson Davies

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

Character | Future | Past | People | World |

Charles de Saint-Évremond, fully Charles Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Évremond

Reputation is rarely proportioned to virtue. We have seen a thousand people esteemed, either for the merit they had not yet attained or for that they no longer possessed.

Character | Merit | People | Reputation | Virtue | Virtue |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

Pleasure comes from obtaining what we feel we are lacking. We have the ability to choose our answer to the question, “What am I lacking right now?” Some people answer materialistically. It is wiser to choose to focus on your lack of spiritual accomplishments and then you can derive pleasure from meeting those needs.

Ability | Character | Focus | People | Pleasure | Question | Right |

John Dewey

A primary responsibility of educators is that they not only be aware of the general principle of the shaping of actual experience by environing conditions, but that they also recognize in the concrete what surroundings, physical and social, that exist so as to extract from them all that they have to contribute to building up experiences that are worthwhile.

Character | Experience | Responsibility |

John Dewey

We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything.

Character | Experience | Future | Meaning | Present | Time |

Henry Van Dyke, fully Henry Jackson Van Dyke

Live by admiration rather than disgust. Judge people by their best, not by their worst.

Admiration | Character | People |

Orville Dewey

Occupied people are not unhappy people.

Character | People |

Y. Eibeschuetz

No person sees all of his faults. Every person considers himself righteous an feels whatever he does is correct. For every act a person does, he has a thousand excuses and rationalizations. A person does not see what goes against his prejudices. Other people can be much more objective about you and can find your wrongdoings and faults. Hence, be willing to listen to what an admonisher has to say.

Character | People |

Albert Einstein

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.

Character | Self | Sense | Value |

Rudolf Driekurs

We can change our whole life and the attitude of people around us simply by changing ourselves.

Change | Character | Life | Life | People |

Francois Urbain Domergue

Some people study all their life, and at their death they have learned everything except to think.

Character | Death | Life | Life | People | Study |

Eliyahu de Vidas,

When your property or possessions sustain some damage or loss, work on yourself to accept the Almighty’s judgment with love. Realize you were born without any belongings and you will eventually leave the world without belongings. You need not identify with your possessions since they are not an integral part of you.

Character | Judgment | Love | Need | Possessions | Property | Will | Work | World |

J. Stanley Durkee

You can't stop the people from thinking - but you can start them.

Character | People | Thinking |

John Dewey

Search for a single, inclusive good is doomed to failure. Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situation of experience its own full and unique meaning.

Character | Experience | Failure | Good | Life | Life | Meaning | Search | Unique | Happiness |

Henry Van Dyke, fully Henry Jackson Van Dyke

Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.

Character | People | Afraid |

Albert Einstein

A successful man is he who receives a great deal from his fellowmen, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them. The value of a man, however, should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

Character | Man | Receive | Service | Value |

Robertson Davies

If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow creatures, let him begin the long, solitary task of perfecting himself.

Character | Man | Wants | Value |