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

William Congreve

Thought precedes the will to think, and error lives ere reason can be born. Reason, the power to guess at right and wrong, the twinkling lamp of wand'ring life, that winks and wakes by turns fooling the follower 'twixt shade and shining.

Character | Error | Power | Reason | Right | Thought | Will | Wisdom |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Consider and act with reference to the true ends of existence. This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

Action | Character | Ends | Eternity | Existence | Life | Life | Will | World |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

Action | Character | Eternity | Life | Life | Will | World |

Thomas Chalmers

Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write you name, in kindness, love, and mercy, on the hearts of thousands you come in contact with year by year; you will never be forgotten. No, your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven.

Character | Deeds | Destroy | Good | Heaven | Kindness | Love | Mercy | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Deeds |

Parks Cousins

Make good habits and they will make you.

Character | Good | Will |

Samuel Butler

Night is the Sabbath of mankind, to rest the body and the mind.

Body | Character | Mankind | Mind | Rest | Sabbath |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

No piled-up wealth, no social station, no throne, reaches as high as that spiritual plane upon which every human being stands by virtue of his humanity.

Character | Humanity | Virtue | Virtue | Wealth |

Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Character | Determination | Education | Genius | Men | Nothing | Persistence | Will | World | Talent |

Jean-Pierre Camus de Pontcarré

The only perfection I know of is a hearty love of god, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself. Charity is the only virtue which rightly unites us to God and man. Such union is our final aim and end, and all the rest is mere delusion.

Character | Charity | Delusion | God | Love | Man | Perfection | Rest | Virtue | Virtue | God |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Virtue is not the absence of vices or the voidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.

Absence | Character | Pain | Virtue | Virtue |

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

Honesty is the best policy, I will stick to that. The good shall have my hand and heart, but the bad neither foot nor fellowship. And in my mind, the main point of governing, is to make a good beginning.

Character | Good | Honesty | Policy | Will |

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

There is no remembrance which time does not obliterate, nor pain which death does not terminate.

Character | Death | Pain | Time |

Allan Chalmers, fully Allan Knight Chalmers

Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of thousands you come in contact with year by year, and you will never be forgotten. Your name and your good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven.

Character | Deeds | Good | Heaven | Kindness | Love | Mercy | Will | Deeds |

Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz

All beginnings are difficult, but there is nothing that stands in the way when you have a strong will to accomplish. The essential thing is to be sincerely resolved to be successful.

Character | Nothing | Will |

Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

If your everyday practice is to open to all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that - then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you’ll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught.

Character | Emotions | People | Practice | Will | Understand |

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 |