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

Phillips Brooks

Let us beware of losing our enthusiasms. Let us ever glory in something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our life.

Admiration | Character | Glory | Life | Life |

Seymour Cohen, fully Seymour Jay Cohen

A modern commentator made the observation that there re those who seek knowledge about everything and understand nothing. It is wonder - not mere curiosity - a sense of enchantment, of respect for the mysteries of love for the other, that is essential to the difference between a knowing that is simply a gathering of information and techniques and a knowing that seeks insight and understanding. It is wonder that reveals how intimate is the relationship between knowledge of the other and knowledge of the self, between inwardness and outwardness.

Character | Curiosity | Insight | Knowing | Knowledge | Love | Nothing | Observation | Relationship | Respect | Self | Sense | Understanding | Wonder | Respect | Understand |

Susan Fenimore Cooper, fully Susan Augusta Fenimore Cooper

What a noble gift to man are the forests! What a debt of gratitude and admiration we owe to their beauty and their utility! How pleasantly the shadows of the wood fall upon our heads when we turn from the glitter and turmoil of the world of man!

Admiration | Beauty | Character | Debt | Gratitude | Man | Turmoil | Wisdom | World | Beauty |

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 |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

No wonder we are all more or less pleased with mediocrity, since it leaves us at rest, and gives the same comfortable feeling as when one associates with his equals.

Associates | Character | Mediocrity | Rest | Wonder |

Henry Fielding

Beauty may be the object of liking - great qualities of admiration - good ones of esteem - but love only is the object of love.

Admiration | Beauty | Character | Esteem | Good | Love | Object | Qualities |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities. No wonder then, that in this prudent country most people are so shy of praising anything.

Character | People | Wonder |

Anna Jameson

I have great admiration for power, a great terror of weakness, especially in my own sex, yet feel that my love is for those who overcome the mental and moral suffering and temptation through excess of tenderness rather than through excess of strength.

Admiration | Character | Excess | Love | Power | Strength | Suffering | Temptation | Tenderness | Terror | Weakness | Temptation |

Samuel Horsley

Wonder, connected with principle of rational curiosity, is the source of all knowledge and discovery, and it is a principle even of piety; but wonder which ends in wonder, and is satisfied with wonder, is the quality of an idiot.

Character | Curiosity | Discovery | Ends | Knowledge | Piety | Wonder |

John Keble

The childlike faith that asks not sight, waits not for wonder or for sign, believes, because it loves, aright, shall see things greater, things divine.

Character | Faith | Wonder |

Chief Luther Standing Bear

Everything was possessed of personality, only different from us in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth. We learned to do what only the student of nature ever learns, and that was to feel beauty... Observation was certain to have its rewards. Interest, wonder, admiration grew, and the fact was appreciated that life was more than mere human manifestation; it was expressed in a multitude of forms. This appreciation enriched Lakota existence. Life was vivid and pulsating; nothing was casual and commonplace. The Indian lived - lived in every sense of the word - from his first to his last breath.

Admiration | Appreciation | Beauty | Blessings | Books | Character | Earth | Existence | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nature | Nothing | Observation | Personality | Sense | Wonder | World | Appreciation |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

An ardent love and admiration of virtue seems to imply the existence of something opposite to it, and it seems highly probably that the same beauty of form and substance, the same perfection of character could not be generated without the impressions of disapprobation which arise from the spectacle of moral evil.

Admiration | Beauty | Character | Evil | Existence | Love | Perfection | Virtue | Virtue | Beauty |

B. N. Mills

Dreamers and doers - the world, generally divides men into those two general classifications, but the world is often wrong. There are men who win the admiration and respect of their fellowmen. They are the men worth while. Dreaming is just another name for thinking, planning, devising - another way of saying that a man exercises his soul. A steadfast soul, holding steadily to a dream ideal, plus a sturdy will determined to succeed in any venture, can make any dream come true. Use your mind and your will. They work together for you beautifully if you'll only give them a chance.

Admiration | Chance | Character | Man | Men | Mind | Respect | Soul | Thinking | Will | Work | World | Worth | Wrong | Respect |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Anyone who wants to be cured of ignorance must confess it... Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry its progress, ignorance its end.

Character | Ignorance | Inquiry | Philosophy | Progress | Wants | Wonder |

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

We must not, therefore, wonder whether we really perceive a world, we must instead say: the world is what we perceive... To seek the essence of perception is to declare that perception is, not presumed true, but defined as access to truth.

Character | Perception | Truth | Wisdom | Wonder | World |

Musonius, fully Gaius Musonnius Rufus NULL

The greatest admiration gives rise, not to words, but to silence.

Admiration | Character | Silence | Words |

Publius Syrus

Too much familiarity breeds contempt.

Character | Contempt | Familiarity |

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 |