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

William Graham Sumner

The men who start out with the notion that the world owes them a living generally find that the world pays its debt in the penitentiary or the poorhouse.

Character | Debt | Men | World |

John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury

There is little pleasure in the world that is true and sincere besides the pleasure of doing our duty and doing good. I am sure no other is comparable to this.

Character | Duty | Good | Little | Pleasure | World |

Diana Vreeland, born Diana Dalziel

Your world... you have created it for yourself, it is real to yourself, and therefore real to us... It is for you to discover yourself in a world where, alone and free, you may dream the possible dream: that the wondrous is real, because that is how you feel it to be, how you wish it to be... and how you wish it into being.

Character | World |

Isaac Abravanel, fully Don Itshak ben Yehouda Abravanel

The reward of the souls in the world beyond is their ability to attain the true concept of God which is a source of the most wonderful felicity, an attainment impossible for man in this early life because of the disturbances on the part of matter.

Ability | Attainment | God | Life | Life | Man | Reward | Wisdom | World | God |

James R. Adams

Man is a creature of impulse, emotion, action rather than reason. Reason is a very late development in the world of living creatures, most of whom, as far as we know, get along admirably in daily life without it.

Action | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Reason | Wisdom | World |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Pain | Power | Wisdom |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow, make yourself good while life and power are still yours.

Day | Fate | Good | Life | Life | Power | Wisdom | Fate |

Daniel Webster

We are too much inclined to underrate the power of moral influence, the influence of public opinion, and the influence of the principles to which great men - the lights of the world, and of the present age - have given their sanction.

Age | Character | Influence | Men | Opinion | Power | Present | Principles | Public | World |

Hans Christian Anderson

To be of use in the world is the only way to be happy.

Happy | Wisdom | World |

Richard Whately

Those who get through the world without enemies are commonly three classes: the supple, the adroit, the phlegmatic. The leaden rule surmounts obstacles by yielding to them; the oiled wheel escapes friction; the cotton sack escapes damage by its impenetrable elasticity.

Character | Rule | World | Yielding |

Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White

Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them - this is of the essence of leadership.

Character | Man | People | Power | Responsibility |

John Winthrop

We must be knit together in this work as one man; we must entertain each other in brotherly affection; we must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together; always having before our eyes our commission and community as members of the same body.

Body | Character | Commerce | Gentleness | Labor | Man | Meekness | Mourn | Patience | Work | Commerce |