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

James T. Farrell, fully James Thomas Farrell

When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own.

Character | Man | Reading |

Bernard Gilpin

The habit of virtue cannot be formed in the closet; good habits are formed by acts of reason in a persevering struggle with temptation.

Character | Good | Habit | Reason | Struggle | Temptation | Virtue | Virtue |

John Cunningham Geikie

Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choices of good and evil we have made through life.

Character | Evil | Good | Life | Life |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.

Character | Solitude | World |

Robert Hall

If we look back upon the usual course of our feelings, we shall find that we are more influenced by the frequent recurrence of objects than by their weight and importance; and that habit has more force in forming our habits than our opinions have. The mind naturally takes its tone and complexion from what it habitually contemplates.

Character | Feelings | Force | Habit | Mind |

David Hummell Greer

The character of a people, like the character of a person, should not be measured by its worst, but rather by its best; and reckoned by that rule and by that standard.

Character | People | Rule |

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

The power of faith will often shine forth the most when the character is naturally weak.

Character | Faith | Power | Will |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

Apology | Character | Habit | Wrong |

Thomas Haliburton, fully Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pseudonym "Sam Slick"

Whatever can lead an intelligent being to the exercise or habit of mental enjoyment, contributes more to his happiness than the highest sensual or mere bodily pleasures. The one feeds the soul, while the other, for the most part, only exhausts the frame, and too often injures the immortal part... Let all seen enjoyments lead to the unseen fountain from whence they flow.

Character | Enjoyment | Habit | Soul | Happiness |

Edwin Paxton Hood

Be as careful of the books you read as the company you keep. Your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.

Books | Character | Will |

Harry Graham, Fully Jocelyn Henry Clive 'Harry' Graham

Though the noblest disposition you inherit, And your character with piety is pack'd, All such qualities have very little merit unaccompanied by Tact.

Character | Little | Merit | Piety | Qualities | Tact |

Newell Dwight Hillis

Our world is a college, events are teachers, happiness is the graduating point, character is the diploma God gives man.

Character | Events | God | Man | World | God | Happiness |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

The glory of the nation rests in the character of her men. And character comes from boyhood. Thus every boy is a challenge to his elders.

Challenge | Character | Glory | Men |

Greenough NULL

Activity is the presence of function - character is the record of function.

Character |

Joel Hawes

A good character is, in all cases, the fruit of personal exertion. It is not inherited from parents, it is not created by external advantages, it is no necessary appendage of birth, wealth, talents or station; but it is the result of one’s own endeavors.

Birth | Character | Good | Parents | Wealth |

Joel Hawes

A good name lost is seldom regained. When character is gone, all is gone, and one of the richest jewels of life is lost forever.

Character | Good | Life | Life |

Joseph Grew, fully Joseph Clark Grew

Moral stimulation is good but moral complacency is the most dangerous habit of mind we can develop, and that danger is serious and ever-present.

Character | Complacency | Danger | Good | Habit | Mind | Present | Danger |

William James

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

Character | Consciousness | Habit | Little | Man | People | Soul |

Gardner Hunting

No habit has any real hold on you other than the hold you have on it.

Character | Habit |

William James

Nature... is frugal in her operations and will not be at the expense of a particular instinct to give us that knowledge which experience and habit will soon produce. Reproduced sights and contacts tied together with the present sensation in the unity of a thing with a name, these are complex objective stuff out of which my actually perceived table is made. Infants must go through a long education of the eye and ear before they can perceive the realities which adults perceive. Every perception is an acquired perception.

Character | Education | Experience | Habit | Instinct | Knowledge | Nature | Perception | Present | Unity | Will |