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

Bernard Leeming

The tragedy of our time is “the treason of the clerks,” that is, the failure of our best minds to give themselves to contemplation of truth, and their undue preoccupation with immediate problems to the neglect of the deeper problems.

Contemplation | Failure | Neglect | Problems | Time | Tragedy | Treason | Truth | Failure | Contemplation |

Edmund Burke

Fellowship in treason is a bad ground of confidence.

Confidence | Treason |

Henry Ward Beecher

The fear of doing right is the grand treason in times of danger.

Danger | Fear | Right | Treason |

John Dryden

I can forgive a foe, but not a mistress and a friend; treason is there in its most horrid shape, where trust is greatest!

Friend | Treason | Trust | Forgive |

Thomas Carlyle

The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.

Life | Life | Man | Treason |

James Thomson

Ingratitude is treason to mankind.

Treason |

Jonathan Mayhew

To say that subjects in general are not proper judges (of the law) when their governors oppress them and play the tyrant, and when they defend their rights ...is as great a treason as ever a man uttered. Tis treason not against one single man, but against the state - against the whole body politic; tis treason against mankind; tis treason against Common sense; tis treason against God; And this impious principle lays the foundation for justifying all the tyranny and oppression that ever any prince was guilty of. The people know for what end they set up and maintain their governors, and they are the proper judges when governors execute their trust as they ought to do it.

Body | Man | People | Play | Rights | Treason | Trust | Tyranny | Guilty |

Josiah Royce

The world, as transformed by this creative deed, is better than it would have been had all else remained the same, but had that deed of treason not been done at all.

Better | Treason |

Josiah Royce

No baseness or cruelty of treason so deep or so tragic shall enter our human world, but that loyal love shall be able in due time to oppose to just that deed of treason its fitting deed of atonement.

Baseness | Cruelty | Love | Time | Treason | Cruelty |

Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

Baseness | Body | Enemy | Government | Soul | Traitor | Treason | Government |

Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.

Men | Nations | Treason |

Robertson Davies

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.

Means | Treason |

Samuel Adams

In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and, both by precept and example, inculcated on mankind.

Crime | Man | Treason |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

Means | Treason |

Stefan Zweig

Against my will, I became a witness to the most terrible defeat of reason and to the most savage triumph of brutality ever chronicled ... never before did a generation suffer such a moral setback after it had attained such intellectual heights.

Justify | Strength | Treason | Woman |

Theodore Parker

As society advances the standard of poverty rises.

History | Mother | Treason | Infidelity |

Theodore Parker

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive nature away from the heart of man.

History | Mother | Treason | Infidelity |

Thomas Carlyle

The Press is the Fourth Estate of the realm.

Life | Life | Treason |