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

Isaac Barrow

None are too wise to be mistaken, but few are so wisely just as to acknowledge and correct their mistakes, and especially the mistakes of prejudice.

Character | Prejudice | Wise |

Judith Anderson, born Frances Margaret Anderson-Anderson, aka Dame Judith Anderson

There is nothing enduring in life for a woman except what she builds in a man's heart.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Woman |

Antisthenes NULL

A wise man will always be contented with his condition, and will live rather according to his precepts of virtue, than according to the customs of his country.

Character | Man | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wise |

Apocrypha NULL

The heart of fools is in their mouth, but the mouth of the wise is in their heart.

Character | Heart | Wise |

Phillips Brooks

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure and good, without the world being the better for it, without somebody being helped an comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

Better | Character | Existence | Good | Man | Woman | World |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

Character | Death | Life | Life | People | Wise |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

Let no man think lightly of good, saying in his heart, it will not benefit me. Even by the falling of water-drops a water-pot is filled; the wise man becomes full of good, even if he gather it little by little.

Character | Good | Heart | Little | Man | Will | Wise | Think |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

He who is virtuous is wise; and he who is wise is good; and he who is good is happy.

Character | Good | Happy | Wise |

M. L. Boren

You should have education enough so that you won't have to look up to people; and then more education so that you will be wise enough not to look down on people.

Character | Education | Enough | People | Will | Wisdom | Wise |

Bias NULL

The wise man carries his possessions within him.

Character | Man | Possessions | Wise |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

The wise man learns to meet the changing circumstances of life with an equitable spirit, being neither elated by success nor depressed by failure. Thus one realizes the truth of non-duality.

Character | Circumstances | Duality | Failure | Life | Life | Man | Spirit | Success | Truth | Wise |

Brahma-Vaivarta Purana NULL

Piety and selfless deeds elevate the inhabitants of this earth to exalted spiritual estates... self-serving acts reduce them to the realms beneath, of sorrow and pain, rebirths among birds and vermin, or out of the wombs of pigs and beasts of the wild, or among trees. Action is a function of character, which in turn is controlled by custom. This is the whole substance of the secret. This knowledge is the ferry across the ocean of hell to beatitude. For all the animate and inanimate objects in this world... are transitory, like dream. The gods on high, the mute trees and stones, are but apparitions in the fantasy. Good and evil attaching to a person are perishable as bubbles. In the cycles of time they alternate. The wise are attached to neither.

Action | Character | Custom | Deeds | Earth | Evil | Good | Hell | Knowledge | Pain | Piety | Self | Sorrow | Time | Wise | World | Deeds |

Abel Bonnard

No man or woman has achieved an effective personality who is not self-disciplined. Such discipline must not be an end in itself, but must be directed to the development of resolute Christian character.

Character | Discipline | Man | Personality | Self | Woman |

Jean de La Bruyère

Nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is to be preferred.

Character | Enemy | Friend | Nothing | Wise |

William Ellery Channing

Men are never very wise and select in the exercise of a new power.

Character | Men | Power | Wise |

W. G. Cole

The wise man loves to believe nothing; the simple man to believe all things. The latter is credulous to others, the former to himself.

Character | Man | Nothing | Wisdom | Wise |