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

Margaret M. Butts

Learn to laugh. And most of all, learn to laugh at yourself. The person who can give a riotous account of his own faux pas, will never have to listen to another's embarrassing account of it. He will rarely know the sting of humiliation. His a delight to be with, but more important, he is enjoying his own life, and applying to his ills and errors the most soothing balm the human spirit has devised - laughter.

Character | Important | Laughter | Life | Life | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Learn |

Sara Davidson

The ability to laugh at life is right at the top, with love and communication in the hierarchy of our needs. Humor has much to do with pain; it exaggerates the anxieties and absurdities we feel, so that we gain distance and through laughter, relief.

Ability | Character | Humor | Laughter | Life | Life | Love | Pain | Right | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing serves better to illustrate a man’s character than the things which he finds ridiculous. the ridiculous arises from a moral contrast which is innocently placed before the senses. The sensual man will often laugh when there is nothing to laugh at. Whatever it may be that moves him, he will always reveal the fact that he is pleased with himself.

Better | Character | Contrast | Man | Nothing | Will |

W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield

I never saw anything funny that wasn’t terrible. If it causes pain, it’s funny; if it doesn’t, it isn’t. I try to hide the pain with embarrassment, and the more I do that, the better they like it. But that does not mean they are unsympathetic. Oh no, they laugh often with tears in their eyes.

Better | Character | Pain | Tears |

Samuel Griswold Goodrich, better known by pseudonymn Peter Parley

Moral courage is a virtue of higher cast and nobler origin than physical. It springs from a consciousness of virtue and renders a man, in the pursuit or defense of right, superior to the fear of reproach, opposition in contempt.

Character | Consciousness | Contempt | Courage | Defense | Fear | Man | Opposition | Right | Virtue | Virtue |

Josef Matthias Hauer

The man who listens is from the outset a spiritual being compared with the person who merely speaks, sees, and grasps. Hearing and taking in are spiritual activities: hearing the unchangeable, the untouchable, the incomprehensible, the constant, the eternal within the Melos. Only someone who listens can also recognize, interpret, think, speak, apprehend and comprehend.

Character | Eternal | Man | Wisdom |

William James

Poverty indeed is the strenuous life, without brass bands or uniforms or hysteric popular applause or lies or circumlocutions.

Applause | Character | Life | Life | Poverty |

Lin-chi, also Lin-chi Yi-sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai, Rinzai Gigen, Linji, Línjì Yìxuán NULL

When hungry, eat your rice; when tired, close your eyes. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men will know what I mean.

Character | Men | Will | Wise |

J. Russell Lynes

The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.

Character | Insult | Insult |

Madame de Motteville, Françoise Bertaut de Motteville

If only man could be induced to laugh more they might hate less, and find more serenity here on earth. If they cannot worship together, or accept the same laws, or tolerate the wonderful diversity of thought and behavior and physique with which they have been blessed, at least they can laugh together.

Behavior | Character | Diversity | Earth | Hate | Man | Serenity | Thought | Worship | Thought |