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

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities. No wonder then, that in this prudent country most people are so shy of praising anything.

Character | People | Wonder |

John Heuss

The place where forgiveness begins is a troubled, anxious heart. You will never be able to forgive anybody until you yourself are deeply disturbed. To be able to forgive we must come down from the citadel of pride, from the stronghold of hate and anger, from the high place where all emotions that issue from one's sense of being wronged shout only for vengeance and retaliation.

Anger | Character | Emotions | Forgiveness | Hate | Heart | Pride | Retaliation | Sense | Vengeance | Will | Forgiveness | Forgive |

Henry Home, Lord Kames

An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands. Passion swells by gratification; and the impossibility of satisfying every one of his wishes will oblige you to stop short at last after he has become headstrong.

Character | Impossibility | Passion | Will | Wishes | Child |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

The grand difficulty is to feel the reality of both worlds, so as to give each its due place in our thoughts and feelings, to keep our mind’s eye and our heart’s eye ever fixed on the land of promise, without looking away from the road along which we are to travel toward it.

Character | Difficulty | Feelings | Heart | Land | Mind | Promise | Reality |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

Character lives in a man, reputation outside of him.

Character | Man | Reputation |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

What we do depends in large measure upon what we think, and if what we do it evil, there is good empirical reason for supposing that our thought patterns are inadequate to material, mental or spiritual reality.

Character | Evil | Good | Reality | Reason | Thought | Thought |

William Dean Howells

Primitive societies without religion have never been found.

Character | Religion |

E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe

A whipping never hurts so much as the thought that you are being whipped.

Character | Thought | Thought |

Yosef Y. Hurwitz

An honor-seeker is not really interested in self-improvement. He is only interested in gaining approval from others. Hence, he will disregard any fault he has if he knows that others will not notice it. On the other hand, a person who is able to forego his honor is able to focus on truth. His only thought is to do the right thing and he is willing to sacrifice his honor for his principles. Such a person will eventually receive honor, for he will constantly work on improving himself.

Character | Fault | Focus | Honor | Improvement | Principles | Receive | Right | Sacrifice | Self | Self-improvement | Thought | Truth | Will | Work | Approval | Fault | Thought |

David Hume

It is a certain rule that wit and passion are entirely incompatible. When the affections are moved, there is no place for the imagination.

Character | Imagination | Passion | Rule | Wit |

Washington Irving

He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them.

Character | Ideas | Language | Little | Man | Sound | Thought | Will | Words | Thought |

William James

A man’s Self is the sum-total of all that he can call his, not only his body, and his psychic powers, but this clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his land and horse and yacht and bank account.

Body | Character | Children | Land | Man | Reputation | Self | Wife |

E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe

A man will do more for his stubbornness than for his religion or his country.

Character | Man | Religion | Will |

Samuel Horsley

Wonder, connected with principle of rational curiosity, is the source of all knowledge and discovery, and it is a principle even of piety; but wonder which ends in wonder, and is satisfied with wonder, is the quality of an idiot.

Character | Curiosity | Discovery | Ends | Knowledge | Piety | Wonder |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.

Character | Philosophy | Religion |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Rites and vain repetitions have a legitimate place in religion as aids to recollectedness, reminders of truth momentarily forgotten in the turmoil of worldly distractions. When spoken or performed as a kind of magic, their use is either completely useless or else (and this is worse) it may have ego-enhancing results, which do not in any way contribute to the attainment of man’s final end.

Attainment | Character | Ego | Magic | Man | Religion | Rites | Truth | Turmoil |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The causal process takes place within time and cannot possibly result in deliverance from time. Such a deliverance can only be achieved as a consequence of the intervention of eternity in the temporal domain; and eternity cannot intervene unless the individual will makes a creative act of self-denial, thus producing, as it were, a vacuum into which eternity can flow.

Character | Eternity | Individual | Self | Self-denial | Time | Will |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

God may be worshipped and contemplated in any of his aspects. But to persist in worshipping only one aspect to the exclusion of all the rest is to run into grave spiritual peril... The best that can be said for ritualistic legalism is that it improves conduct. It does little, however, to alter character and nothing of itself to modify consciousness... The complete transformation of consciousness, which is “enlightenment,” “deliverance,” “salvation,” comes only when God is thought of as the perennial Philosophy affirms Him to be - immanent as well as transcendent, supra-personal as well as personal - and when religious practices are adapted to this conception.

Character | Conduct | Consciousness | Enlightenment | God | Grave | Little | Nothing | Peril | Philosophy | Rest | Salvation | Thought | God | Thought |

José Iturbi

The only time you have a reputation is when you're not living up to it.

Character | Reputation | Time |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

Heaven and hell are states of mind. The kingdom of heaven is within you. You create your own heaven or hell. The anguish of a personal hell can serve to strengthen you if you will let it. Judgment day takes place every moment of your life.

Character | Day | Heaven | Hell | Judgment | Life | Life | Mind | Will |