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

Bias NULL

It is better to decide between our enemies than our friends; for one of our friends will most likely become our enemy; but on the other hand, one of your enemies will probably become your friend.

Better | Character | Enemy | Friend | Will | Friends |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility; it is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are neighborhoods where it rages like a pest; churches are split in pieces by it, and neighbors made enemies for life. Let the young avoid or cure it while they may.

Business | Character | Dirty | Life | Life | Malice |

Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL

Five great enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.

Ambition | Anger | Avarice | Character | Envy | Peace | Pride |

Philemon NULL

Comparisons make enemies of our friends.

Character |

Richard Whately

Those who get through the world without enemies are commonly three classes: the supple, the adroit, the phlegmatic. The leaden rule surmounts obstacles by yielding to them; the oiled wheel escapes friction; the cotton sack escapes damage by its impenetrable elasticity.

Character | Rule | World | Yielding |

Antisthenes NULL

Observe your enemies for they first find out your faults.

Wisdom |

Alfred Duggan

If a conference lasts a long time, it must end in peace; no one can keep on defying his enemies all day.

Day | Peace | Time | Wisdom |

Jack Holland

Gossip is always a personal confession of malice or imbecility; it is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are neighborhoods where it rages like a pest; churches are split in pieces by it, and neighbor made enemies for life. Let the young avoid or cure it while they may.

Business | Dirty | Life | Life | Malice | Wisdom |

Ludwig Lewisohn

Liberty is a living thing that passes from one generation to the next... The greatest enemy of a living thing is not its enemies but its friends who wish to cling to its antiquated form.

Enemy | Liberty | Wisdom | Friends |

Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

Nothing more assimilates a man to a bast than living among freedmen, himself a slave. Such people as these are natural enemies of society; and their number must be dangerous.

Man | Nothing | People | Society | Wisdom |

Thomas Paine

It is from our enemies that we often gain excellent maxims, and are frequently surprised into reason by their mistakes.

Maxims | Reason | Wisdom |

Donn Piatt

The man who has no enemies has no following.

Man | Wisdom |

Alexander Pope

Get your enemies to read your works in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your second self that he will judge too like you.

Friend | Order | Self | Will | Wisdom |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

War... is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and State, and individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders. Finally, each State can have for enemies only other States, and not men.

Man | Men | War | Wisdom |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Man has other enemies more formidable, against which he is not provided with such means of defense: these are the natural infirmities of infancy, old age, and illness of every kind, melancholy proofs of our weakness, of which the two first are common to all animals, and the last belongs chiefly to man in a; state of society.

Age | Defense | Infancy | Man | Means | Melancholy | Old age | Society | Weakness | Wisdom | Old |

Henry Merritt Wriston

Those who misrepresent the normal experiences of life, who decry being controversial, who shun risk, are the enemies of the American way of life, whatever the piety of the vocal professions and the patriotic flavor of their platitudes.

Life | Life | Piety | Platitudes | Risk | Wisdom |