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

Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe

The greatest manifestation of your love for the Almighty can be expressed on your day of death. Before your death, you might be thinking about how you have not fulfilled all of your wishes and plans. In the moments before your death you might have complaints against the Almighty, or you might fatalistically accept your death by saying, What can be done? My body is giving in to the laws of nature. The doctors have given up hope.” Both of these attitudes are wrong You now face the greatest challenge of your life. You have the potential to submit yourself to the will of the Almighty with love. This level takes preparation. If a person has not mastered control of his thoughts, he is likely to waste his last moments thinking of petty resentments and desires. Frequently confusion and fear of death swallow up every other thought unless one has prepared for that moment.

Body | Challenge | Character | Control | Day | Death | Fear | Giving | Hope | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Thinking | Thought | Waste | Will | Wishes | Wrong | Thought |

Louis-Aimé Martin

If you would know the political and moral condition of a people, ask as to the position of its women.

Character | People | Position |

William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall

You need more tact in the dangerous art of giving than in any other social action.

Action | Art | Character | Giving | Need | Tact | Art |

Jean de La Bruyère

It is boorish to give with a bad grace. If the act of giving entails an effort, what matters the additional cost of a smile?

Character | Cost | Effort | Giving | Grace | Smile |

Jean de La Bruyère

Liberality consists less in giving profusely, than in giving judiciously.

Character | Giving |

William Ellery Channing

A religion giving dark views of God, and infusing superstitious fear of innocent enjoyment, instead of aiding sober habits, will, by making men abject and sad, impair their moral force and prepare them for intemperance as a refuge from depression or despair.

Character | Depression | Despair | Enjoyment | Fear | Force | Giving | God | Intemperance | Men | Religion | Will |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

Constantly giving to someone will increase your love for that person.

Character | Giving | Love | Will |

Tyron Edwards

Whatever our place, allotted to us by Providence, that for us is the post of honor and duty. God estimates us not by the position we are in, but by the way in which we fill it.

Character | Duty | God | Honor | Position | Providence | God |

Owen Feltham

There is no detraction worse than to over-praise a man, for if his worth proves short of what report doth speak of him, his own actions are ever giving the lie of his honor.

Character | Giving | Honor | Man | Praise | Worth |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Our best hope for the future is that the intellect - the scientific spirit, reason - should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind. The very nature of reason is a guarantee that it would not fail to concede to human emotions, and to all that is determined by them, the position to which they are entitled. But the common pressure exercised by such a domination of reason would prove to be the strongest unifying force among men, and would prepare the way for further unifications. Whatever, like the ban laid upon thought by religion, opposes such a development is a danger for the future of mankind.

Character | Danger | Emotions | Force | Future | Guarantee | Hope | Mankind | Men | Mind | Nature | Position | Reason | Religion | Spirit | Thought | Time | Danger | Intellect | Thought |

Louise L. Hay

Forgiveness means giving up, letting go. It has nothing to do with condoning behavior. It's just letting the whole thing go. 'I forgive you for not being the way I want you to be. I forgive you and set you free.' (Affirmation sets you free.)

Behavior | Character | Forgiveness | Giving | Means | Nothing | Forgive |

Claude-Adrien Helvétius

When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in others respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.

Avarice | Character | Evil | Giving | Good | Hate | Injustice | Injustice | Men | Nothing | Society | Guilty |

Oscar Hammerstein II, fully Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hamerstein II

Why you are born and why you are living depend entirely on what you are getting out of this world and what you are giving to it. I cannot prove that this is a balance of mathematical perfection, but my own observation of life leads me to the conclusion that there is a very real relationship, both quantitatively and qualitatively, between what you contribute and what you get out of this world.

Balance | Character | Giving | Life | Life | Observation | Perfection | Relationship | World |

William James

A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.

Character | Man | Position | Responsibility | Will |

William James

Our belief in truth itself.. that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other, what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives.

Belief | Better | Character | Desire | Position | System | Thinking | Truth |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

It is our daily duty to consider that in all circumstances of life, pleasurable, painful, or otherwise, the conduct of every human being affects, more or less, the happiness of others, especially of those in the same house; and that, as life is made up, for the most part, not of great occasions, but of small everyday moments, it is the giving to those moments their greatest amount of peace, pleasantness, and security, that contributes most to the sum of human good. Be peaceable. Be cheerful. Be true.

Character | Circumstances | Conduct | Duty | Giving | Good | Life | Life | Peace | Security | Happiness |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

We all have a gift. Each of us is born with something unique to express, to do, to become. It is your responsibility to discover your unique gift... Once having been discovered, the gift is developed and nurtured and then it is given back... Real joy comes from giving back, from being authentically you and sharing that authenticity with those around you.

Authenticity | Character | Giving | Joy | Responsibility | Unique |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

The key to prosperity is the realization that prosperity doesn’t come by getting more. It comes by giving more... You do not deprive someone else when you prosper, as the Source is unlimited.

Character | Giving | Prosperity |