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

Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith

Freedom is a dreadful thing unless it goes hand in hand with responsibility. Democracy among men is a specter except when the hearts of men are mature.

Character | Democracy | Freedom | Men | Responsibility |

Jean Charles Sismondi, fully Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi

Whenever we cease to hate, to despite, and to persecute those who think differently from ourselves, whenever we look on them calmly, we find among them men of pure hearts and unbiased judgments, who, reasoning on the same data with ourselves, have arrived at different conclusion on the subject of the spiritual world.

Character | Hate | Men | World | Think |

Samuel Smiles

Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one’s duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.

Character | Duty | Life | Life | Men | Nothing |

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 |

Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

These men (chronic fault-finders) should consider that it is their envy which deforms everything, and that the ugliness is not in the object, but in the eye.

Character | Envy | Fault | Men | Object |

Robert Gordon Sproul

Progress is always the product of fresh thinking, and much of it thinking which to practical men bears the semblance of dreaming.

Character | Men | Progress | Thinking |

Melvin Tolson, fully Melvin Beaunorus Tolson

Since we live in a changing universe, why do men oppose change?... If a rock is in the way, the root of a tree will change its direction. The dumbest animals try to adapt themselves to changed conditions. Even a rat will change its tactics to get a piece of cheese.

Change | Character | Men | Universe | Will |

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 |

Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

The world will never be in any manner of order or tranquillity until men are firmly convinced that conscience, honor and credit are all in one interest; and that without he concurrence of the former the latter are but impositions upon ourselves and others.

Character | Conscience | Credit | Honor | Men | Order | Tranquility | Will | World |

William Mackergo Taylor

Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred.

Character | Leisure | Men | Temptation | Time |

William Graham Sumner

What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found the courage to say that there is none.

Character | Courage | Men | Happiness |

George Stanley, fully George Francis Gillman Stanley

To live, mankind must recover its essential humanness and its innate divinity; men must recover their capacity for humility, sanity and integrity; soldiers and civilians must see their hope in some other world than one completely dominated by the physical and chemical sciences.

Capacity | Character | Divinity | Hope | Humility | Integrity | Mankind | Men | Sanity | World |