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

Pierre Charron

As full ears load and lay down corn, so does too much fortune bend and break the mind. It deserves to be considered, too, as another disadvantage, that affliction moves pity, and reconciles our very enemies, but prosperity provokes envy, and loses us our very friends.

Affliction | Envy | Fortune | Mind | Pity | Prosperity | Wisdom |

Washington Irving

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open, this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude… The love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul.

Affliction | Duty | Love | Solitude | Sorrow | Wisdom |

William Cowper

A firm persuasion of the superintendence of Providence over all our concerns is absolutely necessary to our happiness. Without it, we cannot be said to believe in the Scripture, or practice anything like resignation to his will. If I am convinced that no affliction can befall me without the permission of God, I am convinced likewise that he sees and knows that I am afflicted: believing this, I must in the same degree believe that if I pray to him for deliverance, he hears me: I must needs know, likewise, with equal assurance, that if he hears, he will also deliver me, if that will upon the whole be most conducive to my happiness: and if he does not deliver me, I may be well assured that he has none but the most benevolent intention in declining it.

Affliction | Intention | Persuasion | Practice | Providence | Resignation | Will |

Ben Sira

Mercy is seasonable in the time of affliction as clouds of rain in the time of drought.

Affliction | Mercy | Time |

Ben Sira

In the day of prosperity there is a forgetfulness of affliction; and in the day of affliction there is no more remembrance of prosperity.

Affliction | Day | Forgetfulness | Prosperity |

Francis Bacon

As threshing separates the corn from the chaff, so does affliction purify virtue.

Affliction | Virtue | Virtue |

James Bryant Conant

There is an elasticity in the human mind, capable of bearing much, but which will not show itself until a certain weight of affliction be put upon it; its powers may be compared to those vehicles whose springs are so contrived that they get on smoothly enough when loaded, but jolt confoundedly when they have nothing to bear.

Affliction | Enough | Mind | Nothing | Will |

John Donne

Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough ot it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.

Affliction | Enough | God | Man | God |

Thomas Fuller

One month in the school of affliction will teach thee more than the great precepts of Aristotle in seven years; for thou canst never judge rightly of human affairs, unless thou has first felt the blows, and found out the deceits of fortune.

Affliction | Fortune | Teach | Will |

Francis Atterbury

Though it be not in our power to make affliction no affliction, yet it is in our power to take off the edge of it, by a steady view of those divine joys prepared for us in another state.

Affliction | Power |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

Affliction | Defeat |

John Yepes “Saint John of the Cross”

If the memory is annihilated, the devil is powerless, and it liberates us from a lot of sorrow, affliction and sadness.

Affliction | Devil | Memory |

Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo

Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others. Concern yourself only with how you appear before God, concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you.

Affliction | God | God |

Nadine Gordimer

Writing is indeed, some kind of affliction in its demands as the most solitary and introspective of occupations... We must live fully in order to secrete the substance of our work, but we have to work alone.

Affliction | Order | Work |

Niffrari NULL

The sign of My forgiveness in the affliction is, that I make it a means to a knowledge.

Affliction | Forgiveness | Means | Forgiveness |

Richard Sibbes (or Sibbs)

Poverty and affliction take away the fuel that feeds pride.

Affliction |