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

When you have desires to do something wrong, you might feel so embarrassed with yourself for not being on a higher level that you try to repress those desires and forget about them. This is a mistake since it is not dealing with the problem but covering it up. Ignoring your inner feelings and reactions is dangerous. Be aware of what you desire, and have a dialogue with yourself to overcome it.

Character | Desire | Feelings | Mistake | Wrong |

Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Art | Cause | Character | Difficulty | Good | Men | Mistake | Thinking | Virtue | Virtue | Art |

Samuel Butler

From a worldly point of view there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

Character | Mistake | Right |

Charles Montagu Halifax, 1st Earl of Halifax, Lord Halifax

Men often mistake themselves, but they never forget themselves.

Character | Men | Mistake |

John P. Grier

In judging character, too often we mistake rigidity for morality.

Character | Mistake | Morality |

John Locke

Madmen... do not appear to me to have lost the faculty of reasoning, but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths; and they err as men do that argue right from wrong principles. For, by the violence of their imaginations, having taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them.

Character | Ideas | Men | Mistake | Principles | Right | Wrong |

James Russell Lowell

All men who know not where to look for truth, save in the narrow well of self, will find their own image at the bottom, and mistake it for what they are seeking.

Character | Men | Mistake | Self | Truth | Will |

John Locke

The highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty.

Care | Character | Liberty | Mistake | Nature | Perfection |

George Dennison Prentice

It is undoubtedly true that some people mistake sycophancy for good nature, but it is equally true that man more mistake impertinence for sincerity.

Character | Good nature | Good | Impertinence | Man | Mistake | Nature | People | Sincerity |

Michael Novak

It is a mistake to base one’s hopes for happiness upon the enforcement of security and equality. In principle, both desires are insatiable... No individual or society is secure in a world of emergent probability and sin... To exercise liberty is to take risks, to embrace uncertainties.

Character | Equality | Individual | Liberty | Mistake | Security | Sin | Society | World | Society | Happiness |

W. D. Ross, fully Sir William David Ross

It would be a mistake to found a natural science on ‘what we really think’ ... opinions are interpretations, and often misinterpretations, of sense-experience; and the man of science must appeal from these to sense-experience itself, which furnishes his real data. In ethics no such appeal is possible... the moral convictions of thoughtful and well-educated people are the data of ethics just as sense-perceptions are the data of a natural science.

Character | Convictions | Ethics | Experience | Man | Mistake | People | Science | Sense |

Christopher A. Smart

The one and only serious mistake is to be afraid of making mistakes.

Character | Mistake | Afraid |

Samuel Smiles

It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success; they much oftener succeed through failure.

Character | Failure | Men | Mistake | Success |

Herman Lincoln Wayland

Show us the man who never makes a mistake and we will show you a man who never makes anything. The capacity for occasional blundering is inseparable from the capacity to bring things to pass.

Capacity | Character | Man | Mistake | Will |

Horace Traubel

Have I met the hour patiently, without fear, at the portal? Now is my name called, of the lip of my love has spoken: Do I mistake you, O divine Signaler? is it after all some other soul that is hailed. My self is my answer: there’s that in my heart responds, meeting the call with equal voice, establishing forever the unspeakable bond! Bond that does not bind - bond that frees - bond that discovers and bestows. Look! I am flushed with inexhaustible possessions! The old measures vanish, I am expanded to infinite sweep... Before birth, seeing birth, after life seeing life!... This minute grown infinite, the far worlds spread before me, the endless drift of soul...

Birth | Character | Fear | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mistake | Possessions | Self | Soul | Old |

Henry H. Buckley

Mistakes are costly and somebody must pay. The time to correct a mistake is before a mistake is made. The causes of mistakes are first, "I didn't know"; second, "I didn't think"; third, "I didn't care."

Care | Mistake | Time | Wisdom |

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

Mistake | Wisdom |

Donald Davidson

False beliefs tend to undermine the identification of the subject matter; to undermine, therefore, the validity of a description of the belief as being about that subject... The more things a believer is right about, the sharper his errors are. To much mistake simply blurs the focus.

Belief | Focus | Mistake | Right | Wisdom |