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

Thomas Adams

An ounce of discretion is worth a pound of learning.

Character | Discretion | Learning | Worth |

Jean de La Bruyère

Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life; cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks after our immediate interests and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understanding; cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.

Character | Cunning | Discretion | Good | Instinct | Life | Life | Looks | Men | Perfection | Reason | Sense | Understanding |

Benvenuto Cellini

One can pass on responsibility, but not the discretion that goes with it.

Character | Discretion | Responsibility |

George Barrell Cheever

The habits of time are the soul's dress for eternity. Habit passes with its owner beyond this world into a world where destiny is determined by character, and character is the sum and expression of all preceding habit.

Character | Destiny | Eternity | Habit | Soul | Time | World |

Owen Feltham

Knowledge is the treasure of the mind, but discretion is the key to it, without which it is useless. The practical part of wisdom is the best.

Character | Discretion | Knowledge | Mind | Wisdom |

Henry Fielding

Good-breeding is not confined to externals, much less to any particular dress or attitude of the body; it is the art of pleasing or contributing as much as possible to the ease and happiness of those with whom you converse.

Art | Body | Character | Good | Art | Happiness |

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

Character | Imagination | Reality | World |

Thomas Jefferson

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.

Character | Control | Discretion | Education | Enough | People | Safe | Society | Society | Think |

Sydney Smith

Never teach false modesty. How exquisitely absurd to teach a girl that beauty is of no value, dress of no use! Beauty is of value; her whole prospects and happiness in life may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet: if she has five grains of common sense she will find this out. The great thing is to teach her their proper value.

Absurd | Beauty | Character | Common Sense | Life | Life | Modesty | Sense | Teach | Will | Beauty | Happiness |

John Christian Bovee

A sound discretion is not so much indicted by never making a mistake, as by never repeating it.

Discretion | Mistake | Sound | Wisdom |

Léon Gambetta

Great ability without discretion comes almost invariably to a tragic end.

Ability | Discretion | Wisdom |

Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan

The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete.

Wisdom |

Alexander Pope

Expression is the dress of thought.

Thought | Wisdom |

William Makepeace Thackeray

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

Good | Humor | Society | Wisdom |

Thomas Jefferson

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.

Control | Discretion | Education | Enough | People | Safe | Society | Society | Think |

David Andrew Seaman

Life is no dress rehearsal. This is the time to explore, to indulge our curiosity and our hunger for truth.

Curiosity | Hunger | Life | Life | Time | Truth |

Jeremy Taylor

In sickness the soul begins to dress herself for immortality.

Immortality | Soul |

Richard Carlson

Many people live as if life were a dress rehearsal for some later date. It isn't. In fact, no one has a guarantee that he or she will be here tomorrow. Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. When our attention is in the present moment, we push fear from our minds.

Attention | Control | Fear | Guarantee | Life | Life | People | Present | Time | Tomorrow | Will |