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

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Our dispositions will be suitable to that which we most frequently think on; for the soul is, as it were, tinged with the colour and complexion of its own thoughts.

Character | Soul | Will | Think |

Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

Character | Ends | Men | Power | Self |

John Aiken or Aikin

He, whose first emotion on the view of an excellent production is to undervalue it, will never have one of his own to show.

Character | Will | Wisdom |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.

Character | Day | Perfection |

Francis Atterbury

A good character when established should not be rested in as an end, but only employed as a means of doing still further good.

Character | Good | Means |

Berthold Auerbach

All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.

Character | Love | Man | Men |

Naftali Zvi Horowitz of Ropshitz

There will always be people who criticize the behavior of others, regardless of how great they are or what they do.

Behavior | Character | People | Will |

George Matthew Adams

Upon every hand we meet with those who have some secret resentment that is ever being nurtured within their hearts. They resent the success, or happiness of some one whom they think is less deserving than they are. They resent the just recognition that comes to others from work and long effort to excel. Or, they may resent being born poor - or resent the fact that they were even born!... Strive to excel, strive to achieve, where others have failed, and you will find no space within your mind to lodge resentment. Resentment is the child of selfishness, foolish envy, and inactivity... Our life upon this earth is too valuable for resentment of any kind. There is so much to do, so much to learn - so little time in which to live and work it all out.

Character | Earth | Effort | Envy | Inactivity | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Resentment | Selfishness | Space | Success | Time | Will | Work | Child | Happiness | Learn | Think |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

Knowledge and action... are only two aspects of one and the same faculty... There are things that intelligence alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will never seek them.

Action | Character | Instinct | Intelligence | Knowledge | Will |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

We are free when our acts spring from our whole personality... Our character is still ourselves.

Character | Personality |

George Matthew Adams

There is no such thing as a "self-made" man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.

Character | Man | Self | Success |

Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe

The most feared event in a person’s life is death. But we have the ability to transform our death into the greatest act we will perform in our entire life. We can perceive death as our total submission to the will of the Almighty and find tremendous spiritual elevation.

Ability | Character | Death | Life | Life | Submission | Will |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Our understanding are always liable to error. Nature and certainty is very hard to come at; and infallibility is mere vanity and pretense.

Character | Error | Nature | Understanding |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts. Dye it then with a continuous series of such thoughts as these: that where a man can live, there he can also live well.

Character | Man | Mind | Soul | Will |

Berthold Auerbach

Gratitude is a soil on which joy thrives.

Character | Gratitude | Joy |

Henry Christopher "H.C." Bailey

Indecision and hesitation are the weakness of a careful nature always intent on the saving of face and losing it thereby.

Character | Indecision | Nature | Weakness |

Isaac Barrow

If we desire to live securely, comfortably, and quietly, that by all honest means we should endeavor to purchase the good will of all men, and provoke no man’s enmity needlessly; since any man’s love may be useful, and every man’s hatred is dangerous.

Character | Desire | Good | Love | Man | Means | Men | Will |

Richard Baxter

Idleness is the hot-bed of temptation, the cradle of disease, the waster of time, the canker-worm of felicity. To him that has no employment, life in a little while will have no novelty; and when novelty is laid in the grave, the funeral of comfort will soon follow.

Character | Comfort | Disease | Grave | Idleness | Life | Life | Little | Novelty | Temptation | Time | Will | Novelty |

Pierre de Bérulle

The first step towards a creation of character lies, then, in the deliberate choosing of what we think and then thinking persistently on the chosen quality.

Character | Thinking | Think |