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

John Abercrombie

Candor may be considered as a compound of justice and the love of truth.

Candor | Character | Justice | Love | Truth |

Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe

From the very beginning of a person’s life one learns that the purpose of life is not uninterrupted pleasure. Every infant suffers pains and illnesses. We should not perceive illness and pain as negative. Suffering teaches us humility. We learn that we do not have complete power over ourselves.

Beginning | Character | Humility | Life | Life | Pain | Pleasure | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering | Learn |

Adolfo Barcella

Unrequited love is the meaning of life. We’re here to love but not to be loved, to give but not receive. Our mission in this world is to improve humanity and leave a better history than we found. Only selfless love has such power. Only love without interest or expectation of reward can change human beings... To give love without receiving love is the truest love and brings the greatest happiness there is in life.

Better | Change | Character | Expectation | History | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mission | Power | Receive | Reward | World | Expectation | Happiness |

Alphonse Kann

Every man has three characters - that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.

Character | Man |

Joseph Alleine

A man may as certainly miscarry by his seeming righteousness and supposed graces as by his gross sins.

Character | Man | Righteousness |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Embellish the soul with simplicity, with prudence, and everything which is neither virtuous nor vicious. Love all men. Walk according to God; for, as a poet hath said, his laws govern all.

Character | God | Love | Men | Prudence | Prudence | Simplicity | Soul | Govern |

John Armstrong

Virtue and sense are one; and, trust me, still a faithless heart betrays the head unsound.

Character | Heart | Sense | Trust | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Berthold Auerbach

All men are selfish, but the vain man is in love with himself. He admires, like the lover his adored one, everything which to others is indifferent.

Character | Love | Man | Men |

Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani

Love has to spring spontaneously from within. It is no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together; but though Love cannot be forced on anyone, It can be awakened in him through Love itself. Love is essentially self-communicative. Those who do not have It catch It from those who have It. True love is unconquerable and irresistible; and It goes on gathering power and spreading Itself, until eventually It transforms everyone whom It touches.

Character | Coercion | Force | Love | Power | Self |

James Beattie

Let us cherish sympathy. By attention and exercise it may be improved in every man. It prepares the mind for receiving the impressions of virtue; and without it there can be no true politeness. Nothing is more odious than that insensibility which wraps a man up in himself and his own concerns, and prevents his being moved with either the joys or the sorrows of another.

Attention | Character | Man | Mind | Nothing | Sympathy | Virtue | Virtue |

George Matthew Adams

One of the great arts in living is to learn the art of accurately appraising values. Everything that we think, that we earn, that we have given to us, that in any way touches our consciousness, has its own value. These values are apt to change with the mood, with time, or because of circumstances. We cannot safely tie to any material value. The values of all material possessions change continually, sometimes over night. The real values are those that stay by you, give you happiness and enrich you. They are the human values.

Art | Change | Character | Circumstances | Consciousness | Possessions | Time | Art | Happiness | Learn |

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

A man is known by the company his mind keeps.

Character | Man | Mind |

Albertano of Brescia NULL

The angry man always thinks he can do more than he can.

Character | Man |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

A great estate is a great disadvantage to those who do not know hot to use it, for nothing is more common than to see wealthy persons live scandalously and miserably; riches do them no service in order to virtue and happiness; it is precept and principle, not an estate, that makes a man good for something.

Character | Good | Man | Nothing | Order | Precept | Riches | Service | Virtue | Virtue | Riches |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

What a great deal of ease that man gains who lets his neighbor's behavior alone and takes care that his own actions are honest.

Behavior | Care | Character | Man |

H. B.

I saw there was no boundary lines between vegetable and animal life, and hence no beginning nor end to either... All physical phenomena, at their best, are dull and murky till they come up into spiritual life. As an illustration that every law has its universality take the familiar law or principle that action and reaction are equal. What is this but reaping the whirlwind after one has sown the wind, or how does natural law differ from this teaching: ‘Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap?’ Are they aught but different strains in the great cosmic melody?

Action | Beginning | Character | Law | Life | Life | Man | Melody | Phenomena |

Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch, aka Maggid of Mezeritch

I cannot teach you the ten principles of service. But a little child and a thief can show you what they are. From the child you can learn three things: He is merry for no particular reason; never for a moment is he idle; when he needs something, he demands it vigorously. The thief can instruct you in seven things: He does his service by night; if he does not finish what he has set out to do, in one night, he devotes the next night to it; he and those who work with him love one another; he risks his life for small gains; what he takes has so little value for him that he gives it up for a very small coin; he endures blows and hardship, and it matters nothing to him; he likes his trade and would not exchange it for any other.

Character | Life | Life | Little | Love | Nothing | Principles | Reason | Service | Teach | Work | Child | Learn | Value |