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

F. E. Hulme, fully Frederick Edward Hulme

Death is the only master who takes his servants without a character.

Character | Death |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Unrestrained and indiscriminate talk is morally evil and spiritually dangerous.

Character | Evil |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction... The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Character | Darkness | Evil | Hate | Light | Love |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

Character | Evil |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.

Beauty | Character | Degeneracy | Destiny | Evil | Freedom | Good | Man | Ugly | Beauty |

Roger L'Estrange, fully Sir Roger L'Estrange

It is with our passions, as it is with fire and water, they are good servants but bad masters.

Character | Good |

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 |

Edward Lane

Our actions are judged good or evil according to our intentions.

Character | Evil | Good |

Walter Savage Landor

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne.

Character | Public | Punishment |

Maurice Maeterlinck, fully Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck

It is the evil that lives in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others.

Character | Evil |

Yeruchem Levovitz, aka The Mashgiach

Who is a righteous man and who is an evil man? Many people think a righteous man is one who does not transgress, and the evil person is one who constantly transgresses. But even the very righteous also transgress and even the very wicked perform good deeds. The essential difference between the two is that a righteous person tries to overcome his desires to do wrong and the evil person does not.

Character | Deeds | Evil | Good | Man | People | Wrong | Think |

John Locke

The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.

Character | Dread | Evil | Good |

Richard Mant

There is not a vice which more effectually contracts and deadens the feelings, which more completely makes a man’s affections center in himself, and excludes all others from partaking in them, than the desire of accumulating possessions. When the desire has once gotten hold of the heart, it shuts out all other considerations, but such as may promote its views. In its zeal for the attainment of its end, it is not delicate in the choice of means. As it closes the heart, so also it clouds the understanding. It cannot discern between right and wrong; it takes evil for good, and good for evil; it calls darkness light, and light darkness. Beware, then, of the beginning of covetousness, for you know not where it will end.

Attainment | Beginning | Character | Choice | Darkness | Desire | Evil | Feelings | Good | Heart | Light | Man | Means | Possessions | Right | Understanding | Will | Wrong | Zeal | Vice |