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

Arthur Brisbane

Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains.

Character | Good | Power | Regret | Time |

Arthur Burns, fully Arthur Frank Burns

In addition to the inflation, we have stagnating productivity. People don’t work the way they used to.

Character | People | Work |

Hugh Blair

The spirit of true religion breathes gentleness and affability; it gives a native, unaffected ease to the behavior; it is social, kind, cheerful; far removed from the cloudy and illiberal disposition which clouds the brow, sharpens the temper, and dejects the spirit.

Behavior | Character | Gentleness | Religion | Spirit | Temper |

Margaret Bourke-White

Only by his action can a man make (himself/his life) whole... You are responsible for what you have done and the people whom you have influenced. In the end it is only the work that counts.

Action | Character | Life | Life | Man | People | Work |

Hugh Blair

Dissimulation in youth is the forerunner of perfidy in old age; its first appearance is the fatal omen of growing depravity and future shame. It degrades parts and learning obscures the luster of every accomplishment and sinks us into contempt. The path of falsehood is a perplexing maze. After the first departure from sincerity, it is not in our power to stop; one artifice unavoidably leads on to another, till, as the intricacy of the labyrinth increases, we are left entangled in our snare.

Accomplishment | Age | Appearance | Artifice | Character | Contempt | Falsehood | Future | Learning | Old age | Perfidy | Power | Shame | Sincerity | Youth | Youth | Old |

Hugh Blair

Between levity and cheerfulness there is a wide distinction; and the mind which is most open to levity is frequently a stranger to cheerfulness.

Character | Cheerfulness | Distinction | Mind |

Stephan Bodian

Give up the notion that there is a final state to attain. Spiritual life consists of ongoing practice undertaken as a lifetime work. This realization breeds humility, especially when we realize that in our initial infatuation with enlightenment, we underestimate the amount of inner work necessary to free us from our addictive patterns of thought and behavior.

Behavior | Character | Enlightenment | Humility | Life | Life | Practice | Thought | Work | Thought |

Jean de La Bruyère

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other fuel to judge thy work by; it is good, and made by a good worksman.

Character | Feelings | Good | Spirit | Work |

Black Hawk, born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak NULL

My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon and cultivate as far as necessary for their subsistence, and so long as they occupy and cultivate it they have the right to the soil, but if they voluntarily leave it then any other people have a right to settle on it. Nothing can be sold, except things that can be carried away.

Character | Children | Land | Nothing | People | Reason | Right | Spirit | Wisdom |

Hugh Blair

Gentleness, which belongs to virtue, is to be carefully distinguished from the mean spirit of cowards and the fawning assent of sycophants.

Character | Gentleness | Spirit | Virtue | Virtue |

Francis William Bourdillon

The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.

Character | Heart | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mind |

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

Character | Freedom | Hope | Power | Understand |

Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke

The life which is in man is eternal, as all life is eternal; that the soul of man is as immortal as God is; that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of every individual is in the long run absolutely certain.

Character | Eternal | God | Good | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Soul | Universe | Work | World | God | Happiness |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

Be a lamp unto yourselves! Work out your liberation with diligence! Fill your mind with compassion!

Character | Mind | Work |

Hugh Blair

Industry is not only the instrument of improvement, but the foundation of pleasure. He who is a stranger to it may possess, but cannot enjoy; for it is labor only which gives relish to pleasure. It is the appointed vehicle of every good to man. It is the indispensable condition of possessing a sound mind in a sound body.

Body | Character | Good | Improvement | Indispensable | Industry | Labor | Man | Mind | Pleasure | Sound |