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

Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz

Physical pleasures can give a person pleasure and happiness to some degree, but this cannot compete with the elevated pleasure that one can derive when one toils in wisdom.

Character | Pleasure | Wisdom | Happiness |

William Newton Clarke

We communicate happiness to others not often by great acts of devotion and self-sacrifice, but by the absence of fault-finding and censure, by being ready to sympathize with their notions and feelings, instead of forcing them to sympathize with ours.

Absence | Censure | Character | Devotion | Fault | Feelings | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Happiness |

Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

Scandal is what one-half the world takes pleasure in inventing, and the other half in believing.

Character | Pleasure | Scandal | World |

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 |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

Pleasure comes from obtaining what we feel we are lacking. We have the ability to choose our answer to the question, “What am I lacking right now?” Some people answer materialistically. It is wiser to choose to focus on your lack of spiritual accomplishments and then you can derive pleasure from meeting those needs.

Ability | Character | Focus | People | Pleasure | Question | Right |

Martin Esslin, fully Martin Julius Esslin

The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaninglessness.

Ability | Character | Dignity | Man | Reality |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

In reality a major part of pleasure in obtaining things is overcoming the obstructions that stood in our way. Once we realize this, we will be able to decrease our desire for those things that are spiritually or physically harmful just by examining them objectively and seeing that we are not missing so much. At the same time, we can gain more pleasure from spiritual accomplishments by focusing on how much we are missing in this area and can feel the sense of accomplishment in overcoming the necessary difficulties.

Accomplishment | Character | Desire | Pleasure | Reality | Sense | Time | Will |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

We can learn to overcome temptations. The pleasure we derive from physical and material pleasures is to a great extent based on our own imagination. We subjectively build up our feeling of need for those phenomena by greatly exaggerating their inherent pleasure.

Character | Imagination | Need | Phenomena | Pleasure | Learn |

Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski

Much on earth is hidden from us, but to make up for that we have been given a precious mystic sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why the philosophers say that we cannot apprehend the reality of things on earth.

Character | Earth | Feelings | Reality | Sense | World |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

View every difficult situation as an opportunity to grow and we will feel pleasure instead of pain from such situations. Failure to do so will cause you needless suffering.

Cause | Character | Failure | Opportunity | Pain | Pleasure | Suffering | Will | Failure |

Henri Deterding, fully Henri Wilhelm August Deterding

The future belongs to those who are virile, to whom it is a pleasure to live, to create, to whet their intelligence on that of the others.

Character | Future | Intelligence | Pleasure |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

Spend time thinking about the virtues of other people. Do not merely do this as a passing thought, but try to feel pleasure in thinking of their virtues.

Character | People | Pleasure | Thinking | Thought | Time |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

There is no sorrow I have though more about than that, to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.

Character | Love | Sorrow |

Alexandre Dumas, born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie

We enjoy thoroughly only the pleasure that we give.

Character | Pleasure |

Robert Dodsley

Though a taste of pleasure may quicken the relish of life, an unrestrained indulgence leads to inevitable destruction.

Character | Indulgence | Inevitable | Life | Life | Pleasure | Taste |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

If a person demands to have everything he wishes, the lack of even a small pleasure can make him feel extremely unhappy. Excessive demands can even lead some people to consider their entire lives as worthless if they are missing some minor pleasure that they arbitrarily demand.

Character | People | Pleasure | Wishes |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

Some people gauge their value by what they own. But in reality the entire concept of ownership of possessions is based on an illusion. When you obtain a material object, it does not become part of you. Ownership is merely your right to use specific objects whenever you wish and that no one has a right to take them away from you. How unfortunate is the person who has an ambition to cleave to something impossible to cleave to. Such a person will not obtain what he desires and will experience suffering.

Ambition | Character | Experience | Illusion | Object | People | Possessions | Reality | Right | Suffering | Will | Ambition | Value |

Edicts of Ashoka NULL

He who does reverence to his own sect, while disparaging the sects of others wholly from attachment to his own, with intent to enhance the glory of his own sect, in reality by such conduct inflicts the severest injury on his own sect. Concord therefore is meritorious, to wit, hearkening and hearkening willingly to the Law of Piety, as accepted by other people.

Character | Conduct | Glory | Law | People | Piety | Reality | Reverence | Wit |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I am fully convinced that the soul is indestructible, and that its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.

Character | Eternity | Light | Reality | Soul | Will | Wisdom |