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

George Canning

Active beneficence is a virtue of easier practice than forbearance after having conferred, or than thankfulness after having received a benefit. I know not, indeed, whether it be a greater and more difficult exercise of magnanimity for the one party to act as if he had forgotten, or for the other as if he constantly remembered the obligation.

Character | Forbearance | Magnanimity | Obligation | Practice | Thankfulness | Virtue | Virtue |

Pierre Cornielle

To win without risk is to triumph without glory. [When there is no peril in the fight there is no glory in the triumph.] [We triumph without glory when we conquer without danger.][To vanquish without peril is to triumph without glory.]

Character | Glory | Peril | Risk | Wisdom |

e. e. cummings, fully Edward Estlin Cummings

To be nobody-but-myself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

Battle | Character | Day | Fighting | Means | World |

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

Friendship is held to be the severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to family and clan, whose blood is in our own veins. Love between man and woman is founded on the mating instinct and is not free from desire and self-seeking. But to have a friend, and to be true under any and all trials, is the mark of a man!

Character | Desire | Family | Friend | Instinct | Love | Man | Self | Trials | Woman |

Monica Furlong

The best arguments in favor of marriage and family life are not that they promote happiness and reduce loneliness, though at their best they do these things, but that they create a situation in which facing the truth about ourselves - our self-deceiving, touchy, vain, inflated selves - becomes more difficult to avoid than it is anywhere else.

Character | Family | Life | Life | Loneliness | Marriage | Self | Truth | Happiness |

Henry Fielding

As a great part of the uneasiness of matrimony arises from mere trifles, it would be wise in every young married man to enter into an agreement with his wife, that in all disputes of this kind the party who was most convinced they were right should always surrender the victory. By which means both would be more forward to give up the cause.

Cause | Character | Man | Matrimony | Means | Right | Surrender | Trifles | Wife | Wise |

Monica Furlong

The sort of marriage where the couple never have a row, cannot bear “unpleasantness,” the sort of family that is endlessly and determinedly “happy” cannot lead to growth, nor any genuine form of “being.” “Being” is about acknowledging one’s pain, and not trying to conceal it from oneself, or inflict it upon others.

Character | Family | Growth | Happy | Marriage | Pain |

David Grayson, pseudonym of Ray Stannard Baker

All times are great exactly in proportion as men feel, profoundly, their indebtedness to something or other... A feeling of immeasurable obligation puts life into a man and fight into him, and joy into him.

Character | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Men | Obligation |

Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan

Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.

Character |

Zane Grey Orig. name Pearl Grey

To bear up under loss; to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief; to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close; to resist disease and evil men and base instincts; to hate hate and to love love; to go on when it would seem good to die; to look up with unquenchable faith in something ever more about to be - that is what any man can do, and be great.

Anger | Bitterness | Character | Defeat | Disease | Evil | Faith | Good | Grief | Hate | Love | Man | Men | Smile | Tears | Weakness |

Francesco Guicciardini

We fight to great disadvantage when we fight with those who have nothing to lose.

Character | Nothing | Wisdom |

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 |

L. Ron Hubbard, fully Lafayette Ron Hubbard

A man who is willing to accept restriction and barriers and is not afraid of them is free. A man who does nothing but fight restrictions and barriers will usually be trapped.

Character | Man | Nothing | Will | Afraid |

Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

It is a true observation of ancient writers, that as men are apt to be cast down by adversity, so they are easily satiated with prosperity, and that joy and grief produce the same effects. For whenever men are not obliged by necessity to fight they fight from ambition, which is so powerful a passion in the human breast that however high we reach we are never satisfied.

Adversity | Ambition | Character | Grief | Joy | Men | Necessity | Observation | Passion | Prosperity |

James Russell Lowell

Compromise makes a good umbrella, but a poor roof; it is a temporary expedient, often wise in party politics, almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

Character | Good | Politics | Statesmanship | Wise |

Nachman of Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Bratslav, Nachman from Uman NULL

We cannot think two thoughts at the same time. Consequently, when negative thoughts arise, you do not need to fight them. Make an effort to think positive thoughts, and the negative thoughts will disappear.

Character | Effort | Need | Time | Will | Think |

William Penn

Men who fight about religion have no religion to fight about, since they do in the name of religion the thin which religion itself forbids. To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious. It were better to be of no church than to be bitter in any.

Better | Character | Church | Men | Religion |