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

Yehuda Leib Chasman

It is impossible to remove all desires. But we have the ability to channel our desires from physical and material pleasures to spiritual endeavors... Someone who finds fulfillment in spiritual matters is not being deprived of pleasure. Rather he is gaining more pleasure than is possible in material matters.

Ability | Fulfillment | Pleasure |

Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz

There is no greater joy for a wise man than the joy of improving his character traits.

Character | Joy | Man | Wise |

William Ellery Channing

Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no other is, and to do what no other can do.

Character |

George Barrell Cheever

As character to be used for eternity must be formed in time and in good time, so good habits to be used for happiness in this life must be formed early; and then they will be a treasure to be desired in the house of the wise, and an oil of life in their dwellings.

Character | Eternity | Good | Life | Life | Time | Will | Wise | Happiness |

Henry Clay

In all the affairs of human life, social as well as political, I have remarked that courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest to the grateful and appreciating heart.

Character | Heart | Life | Life |

William Benton Clulow

A thorough miser must possess considerable strength of character to bear the self-denial imposed by his penuriousness. Equal sacrifices, endured voluntarily, in a better cause, would make a saint or a martyr.

Better | Cause | Character | Self | Self-denial | Strength |

Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, born Soong Mei-ling or May-ling

In the end, we are all the sum total of our actions. Character cannot be counterfeited, nor can it be put on and cast off as if it were a garment to meet the whim of the moment. Like the markings on wood which are ingrained in the very heart of the tree, character requires time and nurture for growth and development. Thus also, day by day, we write our own destiny; for inexorably we become what we do. This I believe, is the supreme logic and the law of life.

Character | Day | Destiny | Growth | Heart | Law | Life | Life | Logic | Time |

William Ellery Channing

We never know a greater character until something congenial to it has grown up within ourselves.

Character |

George Barrell Cheever

The habits of time are the soul's dress for eternity. Habit passes with its owner beyond this world into a world where destiny is determined by character, and character is the sum and expression of all preceding habit.

Character | Destiny | Eternity | Habit | Soul | Time | World |

Charles W. Eliot

Whatever deprives a man of personal individual motive for self-improvement and robust exertion will not make him free, but on the contrary more servile and in the long run less intelligent, industrious and free, for freedom is a matter of character and will power.

Character | Freedom | Improvement | Individual | Man | Power | Self | Self-improvement | Will |

John Dewey

What is sometimes called an act of self-expression might better be termed one of self-exposure; it discloses character - or lack of character - to others. In itself, it is only a spewing forth.

Better | Character | Self |

Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle

The man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities.

Character | Difficulty | Man |

Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself.

Character | Man |

Madame Deluzy, Luzy Dorothee

Heartlessness and fascination, in about equal quantities, constitute the receipt for forming the character of coquette.

Character |

Albert Einstein

Exaggerated respect for athletics, an excess of coarse impressions brought about by the technical discoveries of recent years, the increased severity of the struggle for existence due to the economic crisis, the brutalization of political life: all these factors are hostile to the ripening of the character and the desire for real culture, and stamp our age as barbarous, materialistic and superficial.

Age | Athletics | Character | Culture | Desire | Excess | Existence | Life | Life | Respect | Struggle | Respect |

Tyron Edwards

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.

Action | Character | Destiny | Wisdom |