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

Honoré de Balzac

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all and love but one.

Character | Love | Wisdom |

Djuna Chappell Barnes

To love without criticism is to be betrayed.

Character | Criticism | Love |

Agnon Schmuel Yoseph Agnon, pseudonym of Samuel Joseph Czaczkes

There is nothing in the world better for the purification of the soul than the curbing of idle talk.

Better | Character | Nothing | Soul | World |

Amen-em-apt NULL

Better is the praise and love of men than riches in the storehouse.

Better | Character | Love | Men | Praise | Riches | Wisdom | Riches |

Richard Alleine

There may be some tenderness in the conscience and yet the will be a very stone; and as long as the will stands out, there is no broken heart.

Character | Conscience | Heart | Tenderness | Will |

Honoré de Balzac

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.

Character | Eternal | Ideals | Man | World | Truths |

Saul Bellow

In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. In here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me?

Art | Character | Heart | Indignation | Love | Man | People | Power | Rest | Soul | Art |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Your disposition will be suitable to that which you most frequently think on; for the soul is, as it were, tinged with the color and complexion of its own thoughts.

Character | Soul | Will | Think |

Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon, aka Rabbi Avraham Maimuni, aka Rabbeinu Avraham ben ha-Rambam NULL

Be careful not to consider yourself wicked. A person who considers himself wicked will not try to improve and is likely to become worse than he is now.

Character | Will |

Eric Lewis, aka ELEW

Romance cannot be put into quantity production - the moment love becomes casual, it becomes commonplace.

Character | Love | Romance |

John Bartlett

Custom governs the world; it is the tyrant of our feelings and our manners and rules the world with the hand of a despot.

Character | Custom | Despot | Feelings | Manners | World |

Bias NULL

It is better to decide between our enemies than our friends; for one of our friends will most likely become our enemy; but on the other hand, one of your enemies will probably become your friend.

Better | Character | Enemy | Friend | Will | Friends |

Bruce Bliven

Perhaps the most important lesson the world has learned in the past fifty years is that it is not true that "human nature is unchangeable."

Character | Human nature | Important | Lesson | Nature | Past | World |

François Bourgoing

The aim and end of prayer is to revere, to recognize and to adore the sovereign majesty of God, through what he is in Himself rather than what he is in regard to us, and rather to love his goodness by the love of that goodness itself than for what it sends us.

Character | God | Love | Prayer | Regard |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources. In desperate straits the fears of the timid aggravate the dangers that imperil the brave. For cowards the road of desertion should be left open. They will carry over to the enemy nothing but their fears. The poltroon, like the scabbard, is an encumbrance when once the sword is drawn.

Character | Courage | Cowardice | Enemy | Nothing | Will | Wisdom |

Georg Brandes, fully Georg Morris Cohen Brandes

The crowd will follow a leader who marches twenty paces ahead of them, but if he is a thousand paces ahead of them, they will neither see nor follow him.

Character | Will | Wisdom | Leader |

Phillips Brooks

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure and good, without the world being the better for it, without somebody being helped an comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

Better | Character | Existence | Good | Man | Woman | World |