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

Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski

Originality and the feeling of one's own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle.

Character | Dignity | Originality | Struggle | Work |

John Dewey

Happiness is fundamental in morals only because happiness is not something to be sought for, but is something now attained, even in the midst of pain and trouble, whenever recognition of our ties with nature and with fellow-men releases and informs our action.

Action | Character | Men | Nature | Pain | Happiness |

Karlfried Graf Von Dürckheim, fully Karl Friedrich Alfred Heinrich Ferdinand Maria Graf Eckbrecht von Dürckheim-Montmartin

Our happiness depends on the fulfillment of our deepest longings. Our most fundamental longing is for something which is our essential being we already really are. Our happiness, therefore, depends on the extent to which we are able to conform to our inner destiny. But such a consummation is only possible insofar as we freely fulfill this intention in our daily life.

Character | Destiny | Fulfillment | Intention | Life | Life | Longing | Happiness |

Benjamin Franklin

To God we owe fear and love; to our neighbours justice and character; to our selves prudence and sobriety.

Character | Fear | God | Justice | Love | Prudence | Prudence | 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 |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Pain and pleasure, good and evil, come to us from unexpected sources. It is not there where we have gathered up our brightest hopes, that the dawn of happiness breaks. It is not there where we have glanced our eye with affright, that we find the deadliest gloom. What should this teach use? To bow to the great and only Source of light, and live humbly and with confiding resignation.

Character | Dawn | Evil | Gloom | Good | Light | Pain | Pleasure | Resignation | Teach | Happiness |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

A small minority are enabled... to find happiness along the path of love; but far-reaching mental transformations of the erotic function are necessary before this is possible. These people make themselves independent of their object’s acquiescence by transferring the main value from the fact of being loved to their own act of loving; they protect themselves against loss of it by attaching their love not to individual objects but to all men equally, and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by turning away from its sexual aim and modifying the instinct which they induce in themselves by this process - an unchangeable, undeviating, tender attitude - has little superficial likeness to the stormy vicissitudes of genital love, from which it is nevertheless derived.

Character | Individual | Instinct | Little | Love | Men | Object | People | Loss | Vicissitudes | Happiness | Value |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Most people work for the greater part of their time for a mere living; and the little freedom which remains to them so troubles them that they use every means of getting rid of it.

Character | Freedom | Little | Means | People | Time | Troubles | Work |

Monica Furlong

The best arguments in favor of marriage and family life are not that they promote happiness and reduce loneliness, though at their best they do these things, but that they create a situation in which facing the truth about ourselves - our self-deceiving, touchy, vain, inflated selves - becomes more difficult to avoid than it is anywhere else.

Character | Family | Life | Life | Loneliness | Marriage | Self | Truth | Happiness |

Henry Fielding

Domestic happiness is the end of almost all our pursuits, and the common reward of all our pains.

Character | Reward | Wisdom | Happiness |

Paul Fleming, also spelled Flemming

Much has been said about the relative happiness; but write it on your heart that happiness is the cheapest thing in the world - when we buy it for someone else.

Character | Heart | World | Happiness |

J. de Finod

Grief counts the seconds; happiness forgets the hours.

Character | Grief | Happiness |

Benjamin Franklin

Avarice and happiness never saw each other, how then should they become acquainted.

Avarice | Character | Happiness |

Arland Gilbert

What a man accomplishes in a day depends upon the way in which he approaches his tasks. When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm miracles can happen. When we do our work with a dynamic conquering spirit we get things done.

Ability | Challenge | Character | Day | Dynamic | Enthusiasm | Joy | Man | Miracles | Spirit | Work |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it.

Character | Man | Talent | Happiness |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Our piety must be weak and imperfect if it do not conquer our fear of death.

Character | Death | Fear | Piety |

Henry Fielding

Good-breeding is not confined to externals, much less to any particular dress or attitude of the body; it is the art of pleasing or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse.

Art | Body | Character | Good | Art | Happiness |

John Ford

Let them fear bondage who are slaves to fear; the sweetest freedom is an honest heart.

Character | Fear | Freedom | Heart |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

What can be the aim of withholding from children, or let us say from young people, this information about the sexual life of human beings? Is it a fear of arousing interest in such matters prematurely, before it spontaneously stirs in them? Is it a hope of retarding by concealment of this kind the development of the sexual instinct in general, until such time as it can find its way into the only channels open to it in the civilized social order? Is it supposed that children would show no interest or understanding for the facts and riddles of sexual life if they were not prompted to do so by outside influence? Is it regarded as possible that the knowledge withheld from them will not reach them in other ways? Or is it genuinely and seriously intended that later on they should consider everything connected with sex as something despicable and abhorrent from which their parents and teachers wish to keep them apart as long as possible? I am really at a loss so say which of these can be the motive for the customary concealment from children of everything connected with sex. I only know that these arguments are one and all equally foolish, and that I find it difficult to pay them the compliment of serious refutation.

Character | Children | Concealment | Fear | Hope | Influence | Instinct | Knowledge | Life | Life | Order | Parents | People | Time | Understanding | Will | Loss |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute. What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Begin it and the work will be completed.

Character | Will | Work |