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

José Joaquín de Olmedo, fully José Joaquín de Olmedo y Maruri

They set the slave free, striking off his chains. Then he was as much of a slave as ever. He was still chained to servility. He was still manacled to indolence and sloth, he was still bound by fear and superstition, by ignorance suspicion and savagery. His slavery was not in the chains, but in himself. They can only set free men free. And there is no need of that. Free men set themselves free.

Character | Fear | Ignorance | Indolence | Men | Need | Slavery | Sloth | Superstition | Suspicion |

James Northcote

Half the things that people do not succeed in, are through fear of making the attempt.

Character | Fear | People |

Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL

Most men are afraid of a bad name, but few fear their consciences.

Character | Fear | Men | Afraid |

François de La Noüe

The bravery founded on hope of recompense, fear of punishment, experience of success, on rage, or on ignorance of danger, is but common bravery, and does not deserve the name. True bravery proposes a just end; measures the dangers, and meets the result with calmness and unyielding decision.

Bravery | Calmness | Character | Danger | Decision | Experience | Fear | Hope | Ignorance | Punishment | Rage | Recompense | Success |

Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL

Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart of life, and is prophetic of eternal good.

Character | Duty | Eternal | Good | Grace | Heart | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Right | Soul | Truth |

Antonio Porchia

Almost always it is the fear of being ourselves that brings us to the mirror.

Character | Fear |

Alexander Pope

Love, hope and joy, fair pleasure’s smiling train, hate fear and grief, the family of pain; these mix’d with art, and to due bounds confin’d, make and maintain the balance of the mind.

Art | Balance | Character | Family | Fear | Grief | Hate | Hope | Joy | Love | Mind | Pain | Pleasure |

Kathleen Norris

I know of but one remedy against the fear of death that is effectual and that will stand the test of a sick-bed, or of a sound mind - that is, a good life, a clear conscience, an honest heart, and a well-ordered conversation; to carry the thoughts of dying men about us, and so to live before we die as we shall wish we had when we come to it.

Character | Conscience | Conversation | Death | Fear | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Sound | Will |

Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL

Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.

Character | Duty | Eternal | Good | Grace | Heart | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Right | Soul | Truth |

Plotinus NULL

Those divinely possessed and inspired have at least the knowledge that they hold some greater thing within them, though they cannot tell what it is; from the movements that stir them and the utterances that come from them they perceive the power, not themselves, that moves them: I the same way, it must be, we stand towards the Supreme when we hold nous pure; we know the Divine Mind within, that which gives Being and all else of that order: but we know, too, that other, know that it is none of these, but a nobler principle than anything we know as Being; fuller and greater; above reason, mind and feeling; conferring these powers, not to be confounded with them.

Character | Knowledge | Mind | Order | Power | Reason |

Plotinus NULL

The pinions of your soul will have power to still the untamed body. The creature will yield only to watchful, strenuous constancy of habit. Purify your soul from all undue hope and fear about earthly things, mortify the body, deny self - affections as well as appetites - and the inner eye will begin to exercise its clear and solemn vision.

Body | Character | Constancy | Fear | Habit | Hope | Power | Self | Soul | Vision | Will |

Thomas Paine

Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

Character | Moderation | Temper | Virtue | Virtue | Moderation |