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

Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, also Moses Hayyim Luzzato, known by Hebrew acronym RaMCHal

Envy comes from foolishness and a lack of understanding. When you are envious of someone, you do not gain anything and o not cause a loss to the person you envy. The only person who loses out is you. There are some people whose foolishness is so strong that whenever they see someone else they know have some good fortune, they feel pain and suffering They are so pained by what others have they derive no pleasure from what they themselves possess.

Cause | Character | Envy | Fortune | Good | Pain | People | Pleasure | Suffering | Understanding | Loss |

Gina Lombroso, fully Gina Elena Zefora Lombroso

Morality is not an imposition removed from life and reason; it is a compendium of the minimum of sacrifices necessary for man to live in company with other men, without suffering too much or causing others to suffer.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Men | Morality | Reason | Suffering |

Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre

Man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. He is not essentially, but becomes through is history, a teller of stories that aspire to truth. But the key question for men is not about their own authorship; I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question, ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’ We enter human society, that is, with one or more imputed characters - roles into which we have been drafted - and we have to learn what they are in order to be able to understand how others respond to us and how our responses to them are a part to be construed... Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious strutters in their actions as in their words. Hence there is no way to give us an understanding of any society, including our own, except through the stock of stories which constitute its initial dramatic resource. Mythology, in its original sense, is at the heart of things. Vico was right and so was Joyce. And so too of course is that moral tradition fro heroic society to its medieval heirs according to which the telling of stories has a key part in educating us into the virtues.

Character | Children | Heart | History | Man | Men | Order | Practice | Question | Right | Sense | Society | Story | Tradition | Truth | Understanding | Words | Society | Learn | Understand |

Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

It is the duty of a man of honor to teach others the good which he has not been able to do himself because of the malignity of the times, that this good finally can be done by another more loved in heaven.

Character | Duty | Good | Heaven | Honor | Man | Teach |

Marya Mannes

Minds are cluttered from the age of six with the values of others - values which bear little relation to their own private capacities, needs and desires.

Age | Character | Little |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

There are many kinds of smiles, each having a distinct character. Some announce goodness and sweetness, others betray sarcasm, bitterness, and pride; some soften the countenance by their languishing tenderness, others brighten by their spiritual vivacity.

Bitterness | Character | Pride | Sarcasm | Tenderness |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

True philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm, and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment.

Better | Character | Enjoyment | Philosophy | Time |

J. Russell Lynes

The greatest contribution of human value one person can make to others is by example.

Character | Example | Value |

Richard Mant

There is not a vice which more effectually contracts and deadens the feelings, which more completely makes a man’s affections center in himself, and excludes all others from partaking in them, than the desire of accumulating possessions. When the desire has once gotten hold of the heart, it shuts out all other considerations, but such as may promote its views. In its zeal for the attainment of its end, it is not delicate in the choice of means. As it closes the heart, so also it clouds the understanding. It cannot discern between right and wrong; it takes evil for good, and good for evil; it calls darkness light, and light darkness. Beware, then, of the beginning of covetousness, for you know not where it will end.

Attainment | Beginning | Character | Choice | Darkness | Desire | Evil | Feelings | Good | Heart | Light | Man | Means | Possessions | Right | Understanding | Will | Wrong | Zeal | Vice |

John M. Mason, fully John Mitchell Mason

Judge thyself with the judgment of sincerity, and thou wilt judge others with the judgment of charity.

Character | Charity | Judgment | Sincerity |

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Age, when it does not harden the heart and sour the temper, naturally returns to the milky disposition of infancy. Time as the same effect upon the mind as on the face. The predominant passion, the strongest feature, becomes more conspicuous from the others retiring.

Age | Character | Heart | Infancy | Mind | Passion | Temper | Time |

Robert J. McCracken, D.D.

The most infectiously joyous men and women are those who forget themselves in thinking about others and serving others. Happiness comes not by deliberately courting and wooing it but by giving oneself in self-effacing surrender to great values.

Character | Giving | Men | Self | Surrender | Thinking | Happiness |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

We do not aim to correct the man we hang; we correct and warn others by him.

Character | Man |

Nicomachus of Gerasa NULL

If we crave for the goal that is worthy and fitting for man, namely, happiness of life - and this is accomplished by philosophy alone and by nothing else, and philosophy, as I said, means for us desire for wisdom, and wisdom the science of truth in things, and of things some are properly so called, others merely share the name - it is reasonable and most necessary to distinguish and systematize the accidental qualities of things.

Character | Desire | Distinguish | Life | Life | Man | Means | Nothing | Philosophy | Qualities | Science | Truth | Wisdom | Happiness |

Michael McCloskey

We are not immortal, but our acts are... The question is not why we exist but whether we deserve to exist as supposedly rational beings if we act like conquerors rather than caring beings willing to share the planet with all those who are less powerful, and to act with restraint in respecting the needs of others and all life to come. As a species, we are on trial to see whether rationality was an advance or a tragic mistake.

Character | Life | Life | Mistake | Question | Rationality | Restraint | Trial |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

I quote others [in order to better express my own self] only the better to express myself.

Better | Character | Order |