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

William Congreve

To converse with Scandal is to play at Losing Loadum; you must lose a good name to him, before you can win it for yourself.

Character | Good | Play | Scandal |

Saint Jerome, aka Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymous, Hierom or Jerom NULL

No one loves to tell of scandal except to him who loves to hear it. Learn, then, to rebuke and check the detracting tongue by showing that you do not listen to it with pleasure.

Character | Pleasure | Rebuke | Scandal |

Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

Enemies carry about slander, not in the form in which it took its rise... The scandal of men is everlasting; even then does it survive when you would suppose it to be dead.

Character | Men | Scandal | Slander |

George Savile, fully Sir George Savile, 1st Marquis of Halifax

Without the consent of the world, a scandal doth not go deep; it is only a slight stroke upon the injured party, and returneth with the greater force upon those that gave it.

Character | Force | Scandal | World |

Hermann Boerhaave

The surest method against scandal is to live it down by perseverance in well doing.

Method | Perseverance | Scandal | Wisdom |

Alexander Pope

Praise undeserv'd is scandal in disguise.

Disguise | Praise | Scandal | Wisdom |

Paul Billheimer

The continuous and widespread fragmentation of the church has been the scandal of the ages. It has been Satan’s master strategy. The sin of disunity probably has caused more souls to be lost than all other sins combined.

Church | Satan | Scandal | Sin |

Baltasar Gracián

The art of correcting scandal is to ignore it; to combat it prejudices your own case.

Art | Scandal | Art |

Blaise Pascal

What a chimera is man! what a confused chaos! what a subject of contradiction! a professed judge of all things, and ;yet a feeble worm of the earth! the great depository and guardian of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty! the glory and the scandal of the universe!

Contradiction | Earth | Glory | Man | Scandal | Truth | Uncertainty | Universe |

George Farquhar

There is no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.

Crime | Scandal |

George Steiner, fully Francis George Steiner

The inception of human consciousness, the genesis of awareness, must have entailed prolonged 'condensations' around intractable nodes of wonder and terror, at the discriminations to be made between the self and the other, between being and non-being (the discovery of the scandal of death).

Discovery | Scandal | Self | Wonder | Discovery |

Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, antiblack laws on the statute books.

Law | Regard | Scandal |

Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas

An honest fellow stripped of all his illusions is the ideal man. Though he may have little wit, his society is always pleasant. As nothing matters to him, he cannot be pedantic; yet is he tolerant, remembering that he too has had the illusions which still beguile his neighbor. He is trustworthy in his dealings, because of his indifference; he avoids all quarreling and scandal in his own person, and either forgets or passes over such gossip or bickering as may be directed against himself. He is more entertaining than other people because he is in a constant state of epigram against his neighbor. He dwells in truth, and smiles at the stumbling of others who grope in falsehood. He watches from a lighted place the ludicrous antics of those who walk in a dim room at random. Laughing, he breaks the false weight and measure of men and things.

Little | Men | Nothing | People | Scandal | Society | Society | Gossip |

Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL

A little scandal is an excellent thing; nobody is ever brighter or happier of tongue than when he is making mischief of his neighbors.

Little | Scandal |

Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

Slanderers are at all events economical for they make a little scandal go a great way, and rarely open their mouths except at the expense of other people.

Events | Little | Scandal |

Richard Leakey, fully Richard Erskine Frere Leakey

For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.

Life | Life | Scandal | World |

Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury

Virtue consisted in avoiding scandal and venereal disease.

Scandal |

Richard Sibbes (or Sibbs)

God's children are neither madmen nor fools; it is but a scandal cast upon them by the madmen of the world. They are the only wise men if it be well considered. First, they make the highest end their aim, which is to be children of God here, and saints hereafter in heaven. Secondly, they aim to be found wise men at their death, and therefore are always making their accounts ready. Thirdly, they labor to live answerable to the rule; they observe the rule of the Word to be governed continually by it. Fourthly, they improve all advantages to advance their grand end; they labor to grow better by blessings and crosses, and to make a sanctified use of all things. Fifthly, they swim against the stream of the times and though they eat and drink and sleep as other men, yet (like the stars) they have a secret settled course of their own which the world cannot discern; therefore a man must be changed and set in a higher rank before he can have a sanctified judgment of the ways of God.

Better | Blessings | Children | God | Judgment | Labor | Man | Men | Rank | Rule | Scandal | Wise | World | God |

Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

Lord of the world, O hear my psalm, And as sweet incense take my plea. My heart hath set its love on Thee And finds in speech its only balm. This thought forever haunts my mind, Some day to Thee I must return, From Thee I came and backward yearn My very fount and source to find. Not mine the merit that I stand Before Thee thus, since all is Thine, The glorious work of force divine, No product of my heart or hand. My soul to Thee was humbly bent Even before she had her birth, Before upon the sphere of earth Her heav’nly greatness made descent.

Day | Decision | Evil | Imagination | Judgment | Justify | Man | Righteousness | Scandal | Spirit | Work |

Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL

To the extent that you pray with all your soul for the person who slanders you, God will make the truth known to those who have been scandalized by the slander.

God | Scandal | Soul | Truth | Will | God |