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

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

A man is known by the company his mind keeps.

Character | Man | Mind |

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 |

Khajah Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Abu Ismaïl Abdullah ibn Abi-Mansour Mohammad or Khajah Abdullah Ansari of Herat

The company of a good man is the light of the soul, of an evil man the poison of life.

Character | Evil | Good | Life | Life | Light | Man | Soul |

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 |

Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

As friendship must be founded on mutual esteem, it cannot long exist among the vicious; for we soon find ill company to be like a dog, which dirts those the most whom he loves the best.

Character | Esteem | Friendship |

Euripedes NULL

Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.

Character | Man | Wisdom |

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

Men often mistake themselves, but they never forget themselves.

Character | Men | Mistake |

Edwin Paxton Hood

Be as careful of the books you read as the company you keep. Your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.

Books | Character | Will |

John P. Grier

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

Character | Mistake | Morality |

James Russell Lowell

A man's mind is known by the company it keeps.

Character | Man | Mind |

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 |

Gina Lombroso, fully Gina Elena Zefora Lombroso

Morality is not an imposition removed from life and reason; it is a compendium of the minimum of sacrifices necessary for man to live in company with other men, without suffering too much or causing others to suffer.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Men | Morality | Reason | Suffering |

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 |

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Perseverance can lend the appearance of dignity and grandeur to many actions, just as silence in company affords wisdom and apparent intelligence to a stupid person.

Appearance | Character | Dignity | Intelligence | Perseverance | Silence | Wisdom |

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 |

Ronald E. Osborn

When the taste is purified, the morals are not easily corrupted. Whatever injures the body, the morals, or the mind, will lessen or vitiate taste; thus, disorders of the body and violent passions of the mind, will do this, and so will also excessive care or covetousness; but above all, a habit of intemperance, and keeping low company will greatly deprave that which was once a good taste.

Body | Care | Character | Good | Habit | Intemperance | Mind | Taste | Will |

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 |