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

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

Behavior | Change | Character | Heart | Morality |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

This spectacle of old age would be unendurable if we did not know that our psyche reaches into a region held captive neither by change in time nor by limitation of place. In that form of being our birth is a death and our death is a birth. The scales of the whole hang balanced.

Age | Birth | Change | Character | Death | Old age | Time | Wisdom | Old |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

Personality is the supreme realization of the innate individuality of a particular living being. Personality is an act of the greatest courage in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, and the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom of personal decision.

Absolute | Character | Courage | Decision | Existence | Freedom | Individual | Individuality | Life | Life | Personality |

Gloria D. Karpinski

Self-knowledge is the primary step in conscious evolutionary change. When people confront and integrate their individual fears and limitations, they facilitate the confrontation and integration of our racial, national, and planetary fears. Lasting social change is only possible when individual consciousness has first been changed.

Change | Character | Consciousness | Individual | Integration | Knowledge | People | Self | Self-knowledge |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

It requires moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice.

Character | Courage |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could be better changed in ourselves.

Better | Change | Character |

Gloria D. Karpinski

Nonresistance isn’t passive. Passivity suggests powerlessness. But non-resistance is extremely powerful. It means we’re consciously choosing what we wish to empower. Nonresistance is the action of wisdom that assesses a situation and realizes there is nothing to be gained from fighting it.

Action | Character | Fighting | Means | Nothing | Wisdom |

Gaius Lucilius

Man is loved mainly because of two virtue: courage first, loyalty second.

Character | Courage | Loyalty | Loyalty | Man | Virtue | Virtue |

L. W. Lynett

The most effective way to cope with change is to help create it.

Change | Character |

Jacques Maritain

A coward flees backward, away from new things. A man of courage flees forward, in the midst of new things.

Character | Courage | Man |

James Russell Lowell

The foolish and dead alone never change their opinions.

Change | Character |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

The proverbial wisdom of the populace in the street, on the roads, and in the markets instructs the ear of him who studies man more fully than a thousand rules ostentatiously displayed.

Character | Man | Wisdom |

Yechezkail Levenstein

A person is a success if he works on the trait of sincerely desiring other people’s success. It is easy to talk as if you wish someone success but inwardly hope he fails. In general you should know that without hard work and wisdom it is impossible to reach any virtue, and you will remain with your natural tendencies and behavior.

Behavior | Character | Hope | People | Success | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wisdom | Work |

Yeruchem Levovitz, aka The Mashgiach

When a person is born, he finds the world in a certain organized fashion. As he grows up, he tries to adjust himself to the assumptions that are accepted in the world. He views each event that occurs with the same perspective as the other people of his generation. These perspectives originated in the past and have been handed down from parents to children. These assumptions are taken for granted to such an extent that most people react to the accepted perspective of the world as if they were laws of the universe that cannot be changed. They are accepted as reality and are not challenged. Only a small minority of people obtain the necessary wisdom to look at the world with complete objectivity. They take a critical look at teach and every thing and try to understand everything as it really is instead of accepting the general prevalent outlook. Those who try to investigate the origin of every perspective will perceive everything in a much different light than is commonly accepted.

Character | Children | Light | Objectivity | Parents | Past | People | Reality | Teach | Universe | Will | Wisdom | World | Understand |

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in company affords wisdom and apparent intelligence to a stupid person.

Appearance | Character | Dignity | Intelligence | Perseverance | Silence | Wisdom |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

There is no mortal truly wise and restless at once; wisdom is the repose of minds.

Character | Mortal | Repose | Wisdom | Wise |