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

Tom Gregory

Our society has progressed largely because of our creativity and inquisitiveness – and because we’re competitive. We’re driven by the desire to develop products and services which are more ingenious than what others have put forth. Competition is inherently good, but when it is tainted with excess greed or negative motives, there can be harmful results. How we compete is very important to our Souls.

Competition | Creativity | Desire | Excess | Good | Greed | Important | Inquisitiveness | Motives | Society | Society |

Sitting Bull, aka Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, born Hoka Psice NULL

What treaty that the white man ever made with us have they kept? Not one. When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? What white man can say I ever stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say I am a thief. What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian. What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has come to me hungry and unfed? Who has ever seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my country?

Abuse | Battle | Children | Father | Land | Law | Love | Man | Men | Money | People | Woman | World | Wrong |

Charles Bradlaugh

Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful. Better a thousand fold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people.

Abuse | Better | Day | Discovery | Free speech | Life | Life | People | Search | Speech | Truth | Discovery |

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, born Anne Spencer Morrow

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few… My life… lacks this quality of significance and therefore beauty, because there is so little empty space. The space is scribbled on; the time has been filled. There are so few empty pages in my engagement pad, or empty hours in the day, or empty rooms in my life in which to stand alone and find myself. Too many activities, and people, and things. Too many worthy activities, valuable things, and interesting people. For it is not merely the trivial which clutters our lives but the important as well. We can have a surfeit of treasures – an excess of shells, where one or two would be significant.

Beauty | Day | Excess | Important | Life | Life | Little | People | Space | Time | Engagement |

Aristotle NULL

The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity.

Excess | Necessity |

Carl Lotus Becker

No one can deny that much of our modern advertising is essentially dishonest; and it can be maintained that to lie freely and all the time for private profit is not to abuse the right of free speech, whether it is a violation of the law or not. But again the practical question is, how much lying for private profit is to be permitted by law?

Abuse | Advertising | Free speech | Law | Lying | Question | Right | Speech | Time |

Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens

Minds, like bodies will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

Comfort | Excess | Will |

Charles Caleb Colton

It has been shrewdly said that when men abuse us, we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve, and still more rare to despise praise, which we do. But that integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.

Abuse | Censure | Despise | Integrity | Men | Opinion | Praise | Virtue | Virtue |

Edmund Burke

Gluttony is the source of all our infirmities, and the fountain of all our diseases. As a lamp is choked by a superabundance of oil, a fire extinguished by excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by intemperate diet.

Body | Diet | Excess | Gluttony | Health |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

To understand the world is wise than to condemn it. To study the world is better than to shun it. To use the world is nobler than to abuse it. To make the world better, lovelier, and happier, is the noblest work of man or woman... He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.

Abuse | Better | Man | Study | Wise | Woman | Work | World | Understand |

Edmund Burke

Obstinacy, sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues - constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness - are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so jut an abhorrence; and in their excess all these virtues very easily fall into it.

Cause | Constancy | Excess | Fidelity | Firmness | Fortitude | Magnanimity |

Francis Bacon

Goodness answers to the theological virtue charity, and admits no excess but error. The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall. But in charity there is no excess; neither can angel or man come in danger by it.

Angels | Charity | Danger | Desire | Error | Excess | Knowledge | Man | Power | Virtue | Virtue | Danger |

Francis Bacon

The desire of power in excess caused angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity is no excess, neither can man nor angels come into danger by it.

Angels | Charity | Danger | Desire | Excess | Knowledge | Man | Power | Danger |

Francis Bacon

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused man to fall.

Angels | Desire | Excess | Knowledge | Man | Power |

Hippocrates, fully known as Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos NULL

Everything in excess is opposed to nature... To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.

Excess | Good | Nature | Nothing |

James Madison

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, though from an opposite cause. Government is instituted to protect property of every sort, as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.

Cause | Excess | Government | Liberty | Man | Possessions | Power | Property | Rights | Safe | Government |

Joseph Addison

Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may; indulge in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings.

Excess | Feelings | Mankind | Music |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.

Excess | Wisdom | Wise |