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

Henry Home, Lord Kames

When you descant on the faults of others, consider whether you be not guilty of the same. To gain knowledge of ourselves, the best way is to convert the imperfections of others into a mirror for discovering our own.

Character | Knowledge | Guilty |

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

The praises of others may be of use in teaching us, not what we are, but what we ought to be.

Character | Wisdom |

N. Grou

A simple heart will love all that is most precious on earth, husband or wife, parent or child, brother or friend, without marring its singleness; external things will have no attraction save inasmuch as they lead souls to Him; all exaggeration or unreality, affection and falsehood must pass away from such a one, as the dews dry up before the sunshine. The single motive is to please God, and hence arises total indifference as to what others say and think, so that words and actions are perfectly simple and natural, as in his sight.

Character | Earth | Exaggeration | Falsehood | Friend | God | Heart | Husband | Indifference | Love | Wife | Will | Words | Parent |

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

They who boast of their tolerance merely give others leave to be as careless about religion as they are themselves. A walrus might as well pride itself on its endurance of cold.

Character | Endurance | Pride | Religion |

Sidney Greenberg

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.

Character | Man |

James Hadfield, fully Captain James Arthur Hadfield

It is literally true that in judging others we trumpet abroad our secret faults.

Character |

Hugh Reginald Haweis

You can only make others better by being good yourself.

Better | Character | Good |

Claude-Adrien Helvétius

When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in others respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.

Avarice | Character | Evil | Giving | Good | Hate | Injustice | Injustice | Men | Nothing | Society | Guilty |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What is uttered from the heart alone will win the hearts of others to your own.

Character | Heart | Will |

Richard Heinzelmann

Be and continue poor, young man, while others around you grow rich by; fraud and disloyalty; be without place or power, while others beg their way upwards; bear the pain of disappointed hopes, while others gain their by; flattery; forego the gracious pressure of the hand, for which others cringe and crawl. Wrap yourself in your own virtue, and seek a friend and your daily bread. If you have, in such a course, grown gray; with unblenched honor, bless God and die.

Character | Disloyalty | Flattery | Fraud | Friend | God | Honor | Man | Pain | Power | Virtue | Virtue | God |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

Hold for yourself the belief that each day that dawns is your last.

Belief | Character | Day |

William James

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact.

Belief | Character | Life | Life | Will | Worth | Afraid |

John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

Guilt is anger directed at ourselves - at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others - at what they did or did not do.

Anger | Character | Guilt | Resentment |

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 |

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

The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is noninterference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.

Character | Happy | Learn |

Yosef Y. Hurwitz

An honor-seeker will not be a truth-seeker... Only if a person talks and acts according to his ideals, independently of what others think of him, will he gain the respect of others.

Character | Honor | Ideals | Respect | Truth | Will | Respect | Think |

Washington Irving

Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.

Character | Wishes |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person... Love is an attitude which determines how we relate to the world... Love is an activity of our spirit... Loving others is impossible until we love ourselves.

Character | Love | Relationship | Spirit | World |