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

Avraham Grodzinski

A person who does not mix with other people will not know how to help others. Such a person lacks knowledge about the way people think, their wants and their desires. Even if he wants to help others, he will not know what is good for them. When he wants to comply with the wishes of others, he will confuse them with his own wishes. Because he lacks knowledge about other people, he will not be able to say what is appropriate and acceptable even if he tries. His obstacle is not a lack of love for his fellow man, but a lack of understanding of others.

Character | Good | Knowledge | Love | Man | People | Understanding | Wants | Will | Wishes | Obstacle |

Washington Irving

After all, it is the divinity within that makes the divinity without; and I have been more fascinated by a woman of talent and intelligence, though deficient in personal charms, than I have been by the most regular beauty.

Character | Divinity | Woman | Talent |

Maria Jane Jewsbury

Love is the purification of the heart from self; it strengthens and ennobles the character; gives higher motive and nobler aim to every action of life, and makes both man and woman strong, noble, and courageous. The power to love truly and devotedly is the nobles gift with which a human being can be endowed; but it is a sacred fire that must not be burned to idols.

Action | Character | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Power | Sacred | Self | Woman |

William Jay

One of the most useless of all things is to take a deal of trouble in providing against dangers that never come. How many toil to lay up riches which they never enjoy; to provide for exigencies that never happen; to prevent troubles that never come; sacrificing present comfort and enjoyment in guarding against the wants of a period they may never live to see.

Character | Comfort | Enjoyment | Present | Riches | Troubles | Wants | Riches | Trouble |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when it may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, miscalculation or madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

Accident | Character | Day | Madness | Man | War | Weapons | Woman | Child |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

In every adult there lurks a child - an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the human personality which wants to develop and become whole.

Attention | Care | Character | Education | Eternal | Personality | Wants | Child |

Jill Johnston

Passivity is the dragon that every woman has to murder in her conquest for independence.

Character | Conquest | Murder | Woman | Murder |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

He can feel no little wants who is in pursuit of grandeur.

Character | Little | Wants |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

How few are our real wants! How easy it is to satisfy them! Our imaginary ones are boundless and insatiable... He can feel no little wants who is in pursuit of grandeur.

Character | Little | Wants |

John Locke

The most precious of all possessions, is power over ourselves; power to withstand trial, to bear suffering, to front danger; power over pleasure and pain; power to follow convictions, however resisted by menace and scorn; the power of calm reliance in scenes of darkness an storms. He that has not a mastery over his inclinations; he that knows not how to resist the importunity of present pleasure or pain, for the sake of what reason tells him is fit to be done, wants the true principle of virtue and industry, and is in danger of never being good for anything.

Character | Convictions | Danger | Darkness | Good | Industry | Pain | Pleasure | Possessions | Power | Present | Reason | Suffering | Virtue | Virtue | Wants | Danger |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Anyone who wants to be cured of ignorance must confess it... Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry its progress, ignorance its end.

Character | Ignorance | Inquiry | Philosophy | Progress | Wants | Wonder |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

As soon as a woman is no longer ours, we are no longer theirs.

Character | Woman |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.

Character | Fear | Man | Wants |

Richard H. Rice, fully Richard Henry Rice

The mature man knows that he is likely to make mistakes. He wants to take responsibility for them. Only by facing his mistakes does he learn to act more responsibly.

Character | Man | Responsibility | Wants | Learn |

Horace Smith

Every man, like narcissus, becomes enamored of the reflection of himself, only choosing a substance instead of a shadow. This love for any particular woman is self-love at second hand, vanity reflected, compound egotism.

Character | Love | Man | Reflection | Self | Self-love | Woman |