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

Charles Lamb

We gain nothing by being with such as ourselves: we encourage each other in mediocrity. I am always longing to be with men more excellent than myself.

Character | Longing | Mediocrity | Men | Nothing |

BaMishol HaTzar. Kabak

You are rich, though you do not know it. You have wells of kindness within your heart. At times man will bless you more for a smile, a kindly glance, a gesture of forgiveness, than for treasures of gold.

Character | Forgiveness | Gold | Heart | Kindness | Man | Smile | Will |

Ya’akov Dov "Katzele" Katz

The goal of overcoming the demand for gratifying desires is not to deny oneself pleasure, but to try to keep desires in a perspective that will allow us to overcome them because of a realization that our happiness is not dependent on them.

Character | Pleasure | Will | Happiness |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

The only moral virtue of war is that it compels the capitalist system to look itself in the face and admit it is a fraud. It compels the present society to admit that it has no morals it will not sacrifice for gain.

Character | Fraud | Present | Sacrifice | Society | System | Virtue | Virtue | War | Will | Society |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the appalling silence of the so-called good people. It may be that our generation will have to repent not only for the diabolical actions and vitriolic words of the children of darkness, but also for the crippling fears and tragic apathy of the children of light.

Apathy | Character | Children | Darkness | Good | Light | People | Silence | Tragedy | Will | Words |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one’s whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.

Attainment | Character | Nothing | Wholeness | Will |