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

William Ellery Channing

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

Character | Spirit |

Fred Pierce Corson

If we think of life as a journey and consider it to be the opportunity for getting from where we are to where we want to be, we will have a working rule that provides us with both a purpose and expanding possibilities for our lives.

Character | Journey | Life | Life | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Rule | Will | Think |

V. W. Burrows

One of the saddest experiences which can ever come to a human being is to awaken, gray-haired and wrinkled near the close of an unproductive career, to the fact that all through the years he has been using only a small part of himself!

Character | Wisdom |

John Byron, aka 'Mad Jack'

A man the monarch of his soul.

Character | Man | Soul |

Richard E. Byrd, fully Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr.

A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes he is no longer indispensable.

Character | Indispensable | Man | Wisdom |

Margaret M. Butts

Learn to laugh. And most of all, learn to laugh at yourself. The person who can give a riotous account of his own faux pas, will never have to listen to another's embarrassing account of it. He will rarely know the sting of humiliation. His a delight to be with, but more important, he is enjoying his own life, and applying to his ills and errors the most soothing balm the human spirit has devised - laughter.

Character | Important | Laughter | Life | Life | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Learn |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

There have been men who could play delightful music on one string of the violin, but there never was a man who could produce the harmonies of heaven in his soul by a one-stringed virtue.

Character | Heaven | Man | Men | Music | Play | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |

Pierre Charron

Mutability is the a badge of infirmity. It is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike.

Character | Design | Man | Mutability |

Samuel Butler

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, but the unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to him - therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.

Character | Man | Progress | World |

Richard Cecil

Aversion from reproof is not wise. It is a mark of a little mind. A great man can afford to lose; a little, insignificant fellow is afraid of being snuffed out.

Character | Little | Man | Mind | Wise | Afraid |

William Ellery Channing

Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no other is, and to do what no other can do.

Character |

William Ellery Channing

There are seasons, in human affairs, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. There are periods when to dare, is the highest wisdom.

Character | Good | Soul | Wants | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

The great duty of God’s children is to love one another. This duty on earth takes the name and form of the law of humanity. We are to recognize all men as brethren, no matter where born, or under what sky, or institution or religion they may live. Every man belongs to the race, and owes a duty to mankind... Men cannot, by combining themselves into narrower or larger societies, sever the sacred, blessed bond which joins them to their kind... The law of humanity must reign; over the assertion of all human rights.

Assertion | Character | Children | Duty | Earth | God | Humanity | Law | Love | Man | Mankind | Men | Race | Religion | Rights | Sacred | Blessed |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

The golden age is not in the past, but in the future: not in the origin of human experience, but in its consummate flower: not opening in Eden, but out from Gethsemane.

Age | Character | Experience | Future | Past |

Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

Scandal is what one-half the world takes pleasure in inventing, and the other half in believing.

Character | Pleasure | Scandal | World |