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

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

As faintness is a disease of the body, so is vice a sickness of the mind. Wherefore, since we judge those that have corporal infirmities to be rather worthy of compassion than hatred, much more are they to be pitied, and not abhorred, whose minds are oppressed with wickedness, the greatest malady that may be.

Body | Character | Compassion | Disease | Mind | Wickedness | Vice |

Euripedes NULL

Inside the souls of wealthy men bleak famine lives while minds of stature struggle trapped in starving bodies. How then can man distinguish man, what test can he use? The test of wealth? That measure means poverty of mind; of poverty? The pauper owns one thing, the sickness of his condition, a compelling teacher of evil; by nerve in war? Yet who, when a spear is cast across his face, will stand to witness his companion’s courage? We can only toss our judgments random on the wind.

Character | Courage | Distinguish | Evil | Man | Means | Men | Mind | Poverty | Struggle | War | Wealth | Will | Witness | Teacher |

Elizabeth Fry, fully Elizabeth "Betsy" Fry, née Gurney

The encouragement of industry and frugality among the poor, by visits at their own inhabitations; the relief of real distress, whether arising from sickness or other causes; and the prevention.

Character | Frugality | Industry | Truth | Virtue | Virtue |

Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton

Sickness and disease are in weak minds the sources of melancholy; but that which is painful to the body, may be profitable to the soul. Sickness puts us in mind of our mortality, and, while we drive on heedlessly in the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, kindly pulls us by the ear, and brings us to a proper sense of duty.

Body | Disease | Duty | Melancholy | Mind | Sense | Soul | Wisdom |

Thomas Draxe

The chamber of sickness is the chapel of devotion.

Devotion | Wisdom |

Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley

"Keep aloof from sadness," says an Icelandic writer, "for sadness is a sickness of the soul." Life has, indeed, many ills, but the mind that views every object in its most cheering aspect, and every doubtful dispensation as replete with latent good, bears within itself a powerful and perpetual antidote. The gloomy soul aggravates misfortune, while a cheerful smile often dispels those mists that portend a storm.

Good | Life | Life | Mind | Misfortune | Object | Sadness | Smile | Soul | Wisdom |

Sydney Smith

The real object of education is to give children resources that will endure as long as life endures; habits that time will ameliorate, not destroy; occupation that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and useful, and death less terrible.

Age | Children | Death | Destroy | Education | Life | Life | Object | Occupation | Solitude | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Mary Baker Eddy

Both sin and sickness are error, and Truth is their remedy.

Error | Sin | Truth |

Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

No sickness worse than imagining thyself to be perfect can afflict thy soul.

Soul |

Ssemiao NULL

He who would take good care of his health should be sparing in his tastes, banish his worries, temper his desires, restrain his emotions, take good care of his vital force, spare his words, regard lightly success and failure, ignore sorrows and difficulties, drive away foolish ambitions, avoid great likes and dislikes, calm his vision and his hearing, and be faithful in his internal regimen. How can one have sickness if he does not tire his spirits and worry his soul? Therefore he would nourish his nature should eat only when he is hungry and not fill himself with food, and he should drink only when he is thirsty and not fill himself with too much drink. He should eat little and between long intervals, and not too much and not too constantly. He should aim at being a little hungry when well-filled, and being a little well-filled when hungry. Being well-filled hurts the lungs and being hungry hurts the flow of vital energy.

Care | Emotions | Energy | Failure | Force | Good | Health | Little | Nature | Regard | Soul | Success | Temper | Vision | Words | Worry |

Hu Shih, born Hu Hung-hsing

The underlying sickness of human life is an unwillingness to look with open eyes at the condition of the world.

Life | Life | World |

Jeremy Taylor

In sickness the soul begins to dress herself for immortality.

Immortality | Soul |

Wang Wei, aka Wang Youcheng

How could sufferings be relieved through purification? To know the Path is to get lost at the ford. Indeed, sickness comes from worldly love and poverty begins with the pursuit of greed.

Greed | Love | Poverty |

Ben Hecht

[Prejudice is] our method of transferring our own sickness to others. It is our ruse for disliking other rather than ourselves.

Method | Prejudice |

Claude Bernard

A living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvelous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism. There are no forces opposed and struggling one with another; in nature there can be only order and disorder, harmony or discord... Sickness and death are merely a dissolution or disturbance of the mechanism which regulates the contact of vital stimulants with organic units.

Death | Harmony | Means | Nature | Nothing | Order | Organic |

Dag Hammarskjöld

Loneliness is not the sickness unto death. No, but can it be cured except by death? And does it not become the harder to bear the closer one comes to death?

Death | Loneliness |