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

Ali Hameed Almaas

We are always looking for pleasure, frantically seeking happiness in many ways, and totally missing the simplest, most fundamental pleasure, which actually is also the greatest pleasure: just being here. When we are really present, the presence itself is made out of fullness, contentment and blissful pleasure... Happiness, value, and pleasure are not he result of anything. These qualities are part of our fundamental nature.

Contentment | Nature | Pleasure | Present | Qualities | Wisdom | Happiness |

Hayyim ben Joseph Vital

Sadness is a root cause of many faults... When a person is sad, he fails to take pleasure with what he has.

Cause | Character | Pleasure | Sadness |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

It is with the desire for peace that wars are waged, even by those who take pleasure in exercising their warlike nature in command and battle. And hence it is obvious that peace is the end sought for by war. For every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace... Even wicked men wage war to maintain the peace of their own circle, and wish that, if possible, all men belonged to them, that all men and things might serve but one head, and might, either through love or fear, yield themselves to peace with him!

Battle | Desire | Fear | Love | Man | Men | Nature | Peace | Pleasure | War | Wisdom |

Eugene P. Bertin, fully Eugene Peter Bertin

Honest work bears a lovely face for it is the father of pleasure and the mother of good fortune. It is the keystone of prosperity and the sire of fame. And best of all, work is relief from sorrow and the handmaiden of happiness.

Fame | Father | Fortune | Good | Mother | Pleasure | Prosperity | Sorrow | Wisdom | Work |

Hugh Black

It is a paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self. As a matter of experience, we find that true happiness comes in seeking other things, in the manifold activities of life, in the healthful outgoing of all human powers.

Experience | Life | Life | Paradox | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Wisdom | Happiness |

Richard Baxter

Though selfishness hath defiled the whole man, yet sensual pleasure is the chief part of its interest, and therefore by the senses it commonly works, and these are the doors and the windows by which iniquity entereth the soul.

Man | Pleasure | Selfishness | Soul | Wisdom |

Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

Body | Health | Individual | Liberty | Man | Pleasure | Society | Wisdom | Happiness |

William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

Body | Health | Individual | Liberty | Man | Pleasure | Society | Wisdom | Happiness |

Brillat-Savarin, fully Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin NULL

In compelling man to eat that he may live, Nature gives an appetite to invite him, and pleasure to reward him.

Appetite | Man | Nature | Pleasure | Reward | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous pursuits and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the great cities! The necessaries of life do not occasion at most a third part of the hurry.

Curiosity | Hurry | Life | Life | Love | Mirth | Money | Pleasure | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

The most delicate, the most sensible, of all pleasures consists in promoting the pleasure of others.

Pleasure | Wisdom |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

If you think of the infinite resources of eternity you have little cause to take pleasure in any continuation of your name.

Cause | Eternity | Little | Pleasure | Wisdom | Think |

William Cecil, Lord Burghley, 1st Baron Burghley, also Lord William Cecil Burleigh

Beware of suretyship for thy best friend. He that payeth another man’s debt seeketh his own decay. But if thou canst not otherwise choose, rather lend the money thyself upon good bonds, although thou borrow it; so shalt thou secure thyself, and pleasure thy friend.

Debt | Friend | Good | Man | Money | Pleasure | Wisdom |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

Adventure | Wisdom |

Aaron Burr

The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure, and pleasure my business.

Business | Life | Life | Pleasure | Rule | Wisdom | Business |

Mary Baker Eddy

Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind's faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which stemma to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.

Belief | Contradiction | Error | Health | Mind | Pleasure | Truth | Wisdom | Absurdity |