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

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy. The charlatan is verbose and assumptive; the Pharisee is ostentatious, because he is a hypocrite. Pride is the master sin of the Devil; and the Devil is the father of lies.

Character | Devil | Father | Hypocrisy | Ostentation | Pride | Sin |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

The meaning of man's life lies in his perfecting the universe. He has to distinguish, father and redeem the sparks of holiness scattered throughout the darkness of the world. This service is the motive of all precepts and good deeds.

Character | Darkness | Deeds | Distinguish | Father | Good | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Service | Universe | World |

Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

We deem those happy who, from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them. A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world’s condemnation, a mother still loves on and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy.

Character | Childhood | Evil | Experience | Father | Good | Happy | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Promise | World | Youth | Child | Think |

Ivy Baker Priest

My father had always said that there are four things a child needs - plenty of love, nourishing food, regular sleep, and lots of soap and water - and after those, what he needs most is some intelligent neglect.

Character | Father | Love | Neglect | Plenty | Child |

Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

It behooves a father to be virtuous if he expects his son to be more virtuous than he has been.

Character | Father |

Mary Warnock, fully Helen Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock

If choosing freely for oneself is the highest value, the free choice to wear red socks is as valuable as the free choice to murder one’s father or sacrifice oneself for one’s friend. Such a belief is ridiculous.

Belief | Character | Choice | Father | Free choice | Friend | Murder | Sacrifice | Murder |

Ardis Whitman, fully Ardis Rumsey Whitman

Toscanini's eightieth birthday, someone asked his son, Walter, what his father ranked as his most important achievement. The son replied, "For him there can be no such thing. Whatever he happens to be doing at the moment is the biggest thing in his life - whether it is conducting a symphony or peeling an orange."

Achievement | Character | Father | Important | Life | Life |

Eugene P. Bertin, fully Eugene Peter Bertin

Honest work bears a lovely face for it is the father of pleasure and the mother of good fortune. It is the keystone of prosperity and the sire of fame. And best of all, work is relief from sorrow and the handmaiden of happiness.

Fame | Father | Fortune | Good | Mother | Pleasure | Prosperity | Sorrow | Wisdom | Work |

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.

Age | Enough | Family | Father | Isolation | Mother | Nature | People | Security | Wisdom | World |

Jean de La Bruyère

If poverty is the mother of crimes, want of sense is the father of them.

Father | Mother | Poverty | Sense | Wisdom |

Niels Bohr, fully Aage Niels Bohr

One of the favorite maxims of my father was the distinction between the two sorts of truths, profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.

Absurd | Contrast | Distinction | Father | Maxims | Truth | Wisdom | Truths |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Can any man or woman choose duties? No more that they can choose their birthplace, or their father or mother.

Father | Man | Mother | Wisdom | Woman |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then, is to desire - but to desire what God would have us desire.

Desire | Excellence | Father | God | Heart | Love | Need | Prayer | Wisdom | Words | Excellence | God |

Lowell Fillmore

Every individual is a king in the castle of his own mind. As king of his thoughts he can think those thought which will make him an unhappy and fearful monarch, or he can make his reign joyous and harmonious by listening to the Father within himself before making decisions.

Father | Individual | Listening | Mind | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Think | Thought |

Frederick Dan Huntington

Holiness is religious principle put into motion. It is the love of God sent forth into circulation, on the feet, and with the hands of love to men. It is faith gone to work. It is charity coined into actions, and devotion breathing benediction on human suffering, while it goes up in intercession to the Father of all piety.

Charity | Devotion | Faith | Father | God | Love | Men | Piety | Suffering | Wisdom | Work | God |

Lady Hervey, fully Lady Victoria Frederica Isabella Hervey

A father inquires whether his boy can construe Homer, or understand Horace; but how seldom does he ask, or examine, or think whether he can restrain his passions, whether he is grateful, generous, humane, compassionate, just and benevolent.

Father | Wisdom | Think | Understand |

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Some wonder that children should be given to young mothers. But what instruction does the babe bring to the mother! She learns patience, self-control, endurance; her very arm grows strong so that she holds the dear burden longer than the father can.

Children | Control | Endurance | Father | Mother | Patience | Self | Self-control | Wisdom | Wonder | Instruction |