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

Chinese Proverbs

A man's fortune must first be changed from within.

Fortune | Man |

Charles Churchill

Censure is often useful, praise often deceitful.

Censure | Praise |

Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

You can be cured in 14 days patients afflicted with melancholia if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone. It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring. All that we demand of a human being and the highest praise we can give him, is that he should be a good fellow worker, a friend to all other men, and a true partner in love and marriage.

Day | Friend | Good | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Marriage | Men | Praise | Think |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment.

Discernment | Display | Equity | Flattery | Merit | Motives | Praise | Recompense |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Few persons have sufficient wisdom to prefer censure which is useful to them to praise which deceives them.

Censure | Praise | Wisdom |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

We should manage our fortune as we do our health - enjoy it when good, be patient when it is bad, and never apply violent remedies except in an extreme necessity.

Extreme | Fortune | Good | Health | Necessity |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Moderation has been created a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

Ambition | Fortune | Men | Merit | Moderation | People | Virtue | Virtue | Ambition |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

The contempt of riches in the philosophers was a concealed desire of revenging on fortune the injustice done to their merit, by despising the good she denied them.

Contempt | Desire | Fortune | Good | Injustice | Injustice | Merit | Riches | Riches |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

What we take for virtues is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry know how to arrange; and it is not always from valor and from chastity that men are valiant, an that women are chaste.

Chastity | Fortune | Industry | Men | Nothing | Valor | Valor |

Eric Hoffer

It is a sign of a creeping inner death when we no longer can praise the living.

Death | Praise |

Francis Bacon

Chiefly, the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands.

Fortune | Man |

Francis Bacon

The folly of one man is the fortune of another. For no man prospers so suddenlyu a by others’ errors.

Folly | Fortune | Man |

George Herbert

True praise roots and spreads.

Praise |

Henry Ward Beecher

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a 'but.'

Man | Praise |

Henry Ward Beecher

The meanest, most contemptible kind of praise is that which first speaks well of a man, and then qualifies it with a "but."

Man | Praise |