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

Joseph Joubert

Politeness is to goodness what words are to thought. It tells not only on the manners, but on the mind and the heart; it renders the feelings, the opinions, the words, moderate and gentle.

Feelings | Heart | Manners | Mind | Thought | Words |

Louisa May Alcott

My parents never bound us to any church but taught us that the love of goodness was the love of God, the cheerful doing of duty made life happy, and that the love of one’s neighbor in its widest sense was the best help for oneself. Their lives showed us how lovely this simple faith was, how much honor, gratitude and affection it brought them, and what a sweet memory they left behind.

Church | Duty | Faith | God | Gratitude | Happy | Honor | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Parents | Sense |

Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

The altogether courageous and great spirit has, above all, two characteristics. First, he is indifferent to outward circumstances. Such a person is convinced that nothing but moral goodness and propriety are worth admiring and striving for. He knows he ought not be subject to any person, passion, or accident of fortune. His second characteristic is that when his soul has been disciplined in this way, he should do things that are not only great and highly useful, but also deeds that are arduous, laborious and fraught with danger to life and to those things that make life worthwhile.

Accident | Circumstances | Danger | Deeds | Fortune | Life | Life | Nothing | Passion | Soul | Spirit | Worth | Deeds | Danger |

Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Life is what we are alive to. It is not length, but breadth. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, history, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, it is to be all but dead.

Appetite | Eternal | God | History | Kindness | Life | Life | Love | Money | Music | Pleasure | Poetry | Pride | Purity | God |

Matthew Henry

Goodness makes greatness truly valuable, and greatness make goodness much more serviceable.

Care | Fear | Greatness | Guilt | Riches | Sorrow | Temptation |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wisdom has its root in goodness, and not goodness its root in wisdom.

Wisdom |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches and, to make knowledge valuable you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are nourished. The joy of the spirit indicates its strength. All healthy things are sweet-tempered. Genius works in sport, and goodness smiles to the last.

Cheerfulness | Genius | Joy | Knowledge | Nothing | Spirit | Strength | Will | Wisdom |

René Descartes

As to the freedom of the will, a very different account must be given of it as it exists in God and as its exists for us... That idea of good impelled God to choose one thing rather than another... Thus that supreme indifference in God is the supreme proof of his omnipotence. But as to man, since he finds the nature of all goodness and truth already determined by God, and his will cannot bear upon anything else, it is evident that he embraces the true and the good the more willingly and hence the more freely in proportion as he sees the true and the good more clearly, and that he is never indifferent save when he does not know what is the more true or the better, or at least when he does not see clearly enough to prevent him from doubting about it. Thus the indifference which attaches to human liberty is very different from that which belongs to the divine.

Better | Enough | Freedom | God | Good | Indifference | Liberty | Man | Nature | Omnipotence | Truth | Will | God |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth and goodness and beauty are but different faces of the same All. But beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty.

Beauty | Eternal | Nature | Truth | Beauty |

William Jones, fully Sir William Jones of Nayland, aka Trinity Jones

We find in God all the excellences of light, truth, wisdom, greatness, goodness and life. Light gives joy and gladness; truth gives satisfaction; wisdom gives learning and instruction; greatness excites admiration; goodness produces love and gratitude; life gives immortality and insures enjoyment.

Admiration | Enjoyment | God | Gratitude | Greatness | Immortality | Joy | Learning | Life | Life | Light | Love | Truth | Wisdom | God |

Thomas Carlyle

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever does or can die; but all is still here, and recognized or not, lives and works through endless changes.

Man | Nothing | Past | Truth |

William Shakespeare

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

Virtue | Virtue |

Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

The key to the art of prayer is thought. As we think so we pray. The highest level of prayer is to think God’s thoughts after Him, to attune our lives to love, hope, faith, justice, kindness; to become open channels for the goodness of God. Prayer is quiet meditation about eternal values. It is the mind adventuring in the universe. Prayer moves with the instantaneous speed of thought, through infinite space, to the four corners of the earth, to the depth of the human heart, to the mountaintop of inspiration.

Art | Earth | Eternal | Faith | God | Heart | Hope | Inspiration | Justice | Kindness | Love | Meditation | Mind | Prayer | Quiet | Space | Thought | Universe | Art | Think |

William Shakespeare

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile.

Wisdom |

William Hazlitt

To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind.

Heart | Love | Mind | Strength | Friendship |