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

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

What is life? A gulf of troubled waters, where the soul, like a vexed bark, is tossed upon the waves of pain and pleasure by the wavering breath of passions.

Life | Life | Pain | Pleasure | Soul | Wavering | Wisdom |

Charles Lamb

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

Accident | Action | Good | Pleasure | Wisdom |

John Locke

God has scattered several degrees of pleasure and pain in all the things that environ and affect us, and blended them together in almost all our thoughts.

God | Pain | Pleasure | Wisdom |

Marya Mannes

Good-fellowship, unflagging, is the prime requisite for success in our society, and the man or woman who smiles only for reasons of humor or pleasure is a deviate.

Good | Humor | Man | Pleasure | Society | Success | Wisdom | Woman |

Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL

The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied... but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth.

Little | Mind | Pleasure | Truth | Wealth | Wisdom |

Ramon Llul, aka Raymond Lully, Raymond Lull, Raimundus, Raymundus Lullus or Lullius

Between hope and fear, love makes her home. She lives on thought, and then she is forgotten, dies. So unlike the pleasure of this world are their foundations.

Fear | Hope | Love | Pleasure | Thought | Wisdom | World |

Martial, full name Marcus Valarius Martialis NULL

Of no day can the retrospect cause pain to a good man, nor has one passed away which he is unwilling to remember: the period of his life seems prolonged by his good acts; and we may be said to live twice, when we can reflect with pleasure on the days that are gone.

Cause | Day | Good | Life | Life | Man | Pain | Pleasure | Wisdom |

William (Morley Punshon) McFee

It may be that, while we plodding realists go on, for ever preoccupied with our daily chores, abstracting a microscopic pleasure from each microscopic duty, your true romantic has the truer vision, and beholds, afar off, in all its lurid splendour and terrible proportions, the piquant adventure we call life.

Adventure | Duty | Life | Life | Pleasure | Vision | Wisdom |

Alfred Mercier

What we learn with pleasure we never forget.

Pleasure | Wisdom | Learn |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Satiety comes of too frequent repetition; and he who will not give himself leisure to be thirsty can never find the true pleasure of drinking.

Leisure | Pleasure | Satiety | Will | Wisdom |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

All the opinions in the world point out that pleasure is our aim.

Age | Mind | Pleasure | Wisdom | World |

William (Morley Punshon) McFee

The artist isn't particularly keen on getting a thing done, as you call it. He gets his pleasure out of doing it, playing with it, fooling with it, if you like. The mere completion of it is an incident.

Pleasure | Wisdom |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The preponderance of pain over pleasure is the cause of our fictitious morality and religion.

Cause | Morality | Pain | Pleasure | Religion | Wisdom |

Donald Culross Peattie

Life is an adventure in experience, and when you are no longer greedy for the last drop of it, it means no more than that you have set your face... to the day when you shall depart.

Adventure | Day | Experience | Life | Life | Means | Wisdom |

Samuel Pepys

Most men that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it.

Men | Pleasure | Reserve | Time | Wisdom | World |

Jane Porter

Our griefs, as well as our joys, owe their strongest colors to our imaginations. There is nothing so grievous to be borne that pondering upon it will not make it heavier; and there is no pleasure so vivid that the animation of fancy cannot enliven it.

Nothing | Pleasure | Will | Wisdom |

Samuel Richardson

What pleasure can those over-happy persons know, who, from their affluence and luxury, always eat before they are hungry and drink before they are thirsty?

Happy | Luxury | Pleasure | Wisdom |

Joshua Reynolds, fully Sir Joshua Reynolds

Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labor. It argues, indeed, no small strength of mind to persevere in the habits of industry, without the pleasure of perceiving those advantages which, like the hands of a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape observation.

Excellence | Industry | Labor | Man | Mind | Observation | Pleasure | Reward | Strength | Wisdom |