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

Canassatego Treaty of Lancaster NULL

You who are so wise must know that different nations have different conceptions of things. You will not therefore take it amiss if our ideas of the white man’s kind of education happens not to be the same as yours. We have had some experience with it. Several of our young people were brought up in your colleges. They were instructed in all your sciences; but, when they came back to us, they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger. They didn’t know how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy. They spoke our language imperfectly. They were therefore unfit to be hunters, warriors, or counselors; they were good for nothing. We are, however, not less obliged for your kind offer, though we decline accepting it. To show our gratefulness, if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we will take great care with their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them.

Care | Character | Education | Enemy | Experience | Good | Hunger | Ideas | Kill | Language | Man | Means | Men | Nations | Nothing | People | Will | Wise |

Harold C. Chase, Jr.

The wise person possesses humility. He knows that his small island of knowledge is surrounded by a vast sea of the unknown.

Character | Humility | Knowledge | Wise |

Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz

In the eyes of a wise person, illusory honor is very cheap. Wisdom enables a person to live a life of light and elevation, enabling him to leave pettiness behind.

Character | Honor | Life | Life | Light | Wisdom | Wise |

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.

Art | Character | Wealth | Wise |

Euripedes NULL

It is wise even in adversity to listen to reason.

Adversity | Character | Reason | Wise |

Euripedes NULL

Silence is an answer to a wise man.

Character | Man | Silence | Wise |

Tyron Edwards

He is one of the noblest conquerors who carries on a successful warfare against his own appetites and passions, and has them under wise and full control.

Character | Control | Wise |

Horatio W. Dresser

What I am thinking and doing day by day is resistlessly shaping my future - a future in which there is no expiation except through my own better conduct. No one can save me. No one can live my life for me. If I am wise I shall begin today to build my own truer and better world from within.

Better | Character | Conduct | Day | Future | Life | Life | Thinking | Wise | World |

Dubner Magid, name for Rabbi Jacob ben wolf Krantz

The honor-seeker does not study wisdom to become wiser. Rather his goal is to show off how wise he is. This is an attribute of a fool.

Character | Honor | Study | Wisdom | Wise |

Declaration of Independence NULL

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Character | Liberty | Life | Life | Men | Rights | Self | Truths |

Euripedes NULL

Everything that depends on necessity is its slave in wise men's eyes.

Character | Men | Necessity | Wise |

Dubner Magid, name for Rabbi Jacob ben wolf Krantz

It is a wise man’s good sense to be slow to anger, and his glory to pass over a transgression.

Anger | Character | Glory | Good | Man | Sense | Wise |

Tyron Edwards

Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, "I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction."

Affliction | Character | Comfort | Consolation | God | Man | Quiet | Sorrow | Sympathy | Wise | God |

William Ewart Gladstone

To comprehend a man's life, it is necessary to know not merely what he does, but also what he purposely leaves undone. There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best.

Body | Character | Energy | Life | Life | Man | Wise | Work |

Benjamin Franklin

In dealings between man and man, truth, sincerity and integrity are of the utmost importance to the felicity of life.

Character | Integrity | Life | Life | Man | Sincerity | Truth |

Owen Feltham

Praise has different effects, according to the mind it meets with; it makes a wise man modest, but a fool more arrogant, turning his weak brain giddy.

Character | Man | Mind | Praise | Wise |

Henry Fielding

As a great part of the uneasiness of matrimony arises from mere trifles, it would be wise in every young married man to enter into an agreement with his wife, that in all disputes of this kind the party who was most convinced they were right should always surrender the victory. By which means both would be more forward to give up the cause.

Cause | Character | Man | Matrimony | Means | Right | Surrender | Trifles | Wife | Wise |