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

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune.

Fortune | Good | Moderation | People | Moderation |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Nature has concealed at the bottom of our minds talents and abilities of which we are not aware. The passions alone have the privilege of bringing them to light, and of giving us sometimes views more certain and more perfect than art could possibly produce.

Fortune |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.

Happiness |

William Shakespeare

Oh, how this spring of life resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day, Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And, by and by, a cloud takes all away!

Happiness |

William Shakespeare

Oh, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful In the contempt and anger of his lip!

Happiness |

William Shakespeare

Of neither, girl; For if of joy, being altogether wanting, It doth remember me the more of sorrow; Or if of grief, being altogether had, It adds more sorrow to my want of joy; For what I have I need not to repeat, And what I want it boots not to complain.

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

No more duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions.

Beauty | Fidelity | Fortune | Language | Man | Power | Beauty |

Kautilya, aka Chanakya or Vishnu Gupta NULL

There is poison in the fang of the serpent, in the mouth of the fly and in the sting of a scorpion; but the wicked man is saturated with it.

Disease | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |

Edwin Percy Whipple

No language can fitly express the meanness, the baseness, the brutality, with which the world has ever treated its victims of one age and boasts of them in the next. Dante is worshiped at that grave to which he was hurried by persecution. Milton, in his own day, was "Mr. Milton, the blind adder, that spit his venom on the king's person"; and soon after, "the mighty orb of song." These absurd transitions from hatred to apotheosis, this recognition just at the moment when it becomes a mockery, saddens all intellectual history.

Edwin Percy Whipple

Sydney Smith playfully says that common sense was invented by Socrates, that philosopher having been one of its most conspicuous exemplars in conducting the contest of practical sagacity against stupid prejudice and illusory beliefs.

Generosity | Gluttony | Men | Taste | Happiness |

Padmasambhava, literally "Lotus-Born",aka "Second Buddha", better known as Guru Rinpoche (lit. "Precious Guru") or Lopon Rinpoche NULL

I am present in front of anyone who has faith in me, just as the moon casts its reflection, effortlessly, in any vessel filled with water.

Mind | Will | Happiness |

Kautilya, aka Chanakya or Vishnu Gupta NULL

The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects.

Peace | Tranquility | Happiness |

Elihu Root

War comes today as the result of one of three causes: either actual or threatened wrong by one country to another, or suspicion by one country that another intends to do it wrong ... or, from bitterness of feeling, dependent in no degree whatever upon substantial questions of difference. . . . The least of these three causes of war is actual injustice.

Brotherhood | Charity | Desire | Duty | Individual | Judgment | Love | Malice | People | Progress | Prosperity | Regard | Sentiment | Happiness |

Eleanora Duse, aka Duse

The weaker partner in a marriage is the one who loves the most.

Isolation | Life | Life | Little | Happiness |