Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Heart

"Speak not one thing with the mouth and another with the heart." - Abaye NULL

"The improvement of the mind improves the heart and corrects the understanding." - Agathon NULL

"A man knows not what is in the heart of his fellow." - Ahikar or Ahiqar NULL

"Kindness, the poetry of the heart." - Louis-Aimé Martin

"The hardest trial of the heart is, whether it can bear a rival's failure without triumph." -

"The heart does not lie." -

"There may be some tenderness in the conscience and yet the will be a very stone; and as long as the will stands out, there is no broken heart." - Richard Alleine

"Better is bread with a happy heart than riches with vexation." - Amen-em-apt NULL

"Another good thing in the heart of God is to pause before speaking." - Amen-em-apt NULL

"Religion tends to speak the language of the heart, which is the language of friends, lovers, children, and parents." -

"Never to tire, never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender; to look for the budding flower and the opening heart; to hope always; like God, to love always - this is duty." -

"Can you walk on water? You have done no better than a straw. Can you fly in the air? You have done no better than a bluebottle. Conquer your heart; then you may become somebody." - Khajah Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Abu Ismaïl Abdullah ibn Abi-Mansour Mohammad or Khajah Abdullah Ansari of Herat

"Fasting is only saving bread, but if you have conquered the heart you have conquered everything." - Khajah Abdullah Ansari of Herat, Abu Ismaïl Abdullah ibn Abi-Mansour Mohammad or Khajah Abdullah Ansari of Herat

"The heart of fools is in their mouth, but the mouth of the wise is in their heart." - Apocrypha NULL

"Youth is a cause of hope for three reasons... And these three reasons may be gathered from the three conditions of the good which is the object of hope - namely, that it is future, arduous and possible... For youth has much of the future before it, and little of the past; and therefore since memory is of the past, and hope of the future, it has little to remember and lives very much in hope. Again, youths, on account of the heat of their nature, are full of spirit, so that their heart expands, and it is owing to the heart being expanded that one tends to that which is arduous; therefore youths are spirited and hopeful. Likewise they who have not suffered defeat, nor had experience of obstacles to their efforts, are prone to count a thing possible to them. Therefore youths, through inexperience of obstacles and of their own shortcomings, easily count a thing possible, and consequently are of good hope." -

"A faithless heart betrays the head unsound." - John Armstrong

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

"My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood." - Lee Atwater, fully Harvey LeRoy "Lee" Atwater

"He that does not respect confidence will never find happiness in his path. The belief in virtue vanishes from his heart; the source of nobler actions becomes extinct in him." - Joseph von Auffenberg

"Cheerfulness sharpens the edge and removes the rust from the mind. A joyous heart supplies oil to our inward machinery, and makes the whole of our powers work with ease and efficiency." - Arthur Aughey

"Open your heart to sympathy, but close it against despondency. The flower which opens to receive the dew shuts against the rain" - Arthur Aughey

"There are many seasons in a man’s life - and the more exalted and responsible his position, the more frequently do these seasons recur - when the voice of duty and the dictates of feeling are opposed to each other; and it is only the weak and the wicked who yield that obedience to the selfish impulses of the heart which is due to reason and honor." - Arthur Aughey

"Regeneration is the beginning of holiness in the soul, and admits of no progression; sanctification is carried on progressively in the heart of the renewed, and will be continued until it is completed in the concluding moments of life." - Charles Backus

"A willing heart adds feather to the heel, and makes the clown a winged Mercury." - Joanna Baillie

"You cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind and heart known as Brotherhood, however much you preach, posture, or agree, unless you live it." - Faith Baldwin

"The best thing to give your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity." -

"The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity." - Clara Lucas Balfour

"Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart, like a viper in its hole." - Honoré de Balzac

"There are no little events with the heart. It magnifies everything; it places in the same scales the fall of an empire of fourteen years and the dropping of a woman’s glove, and almost always the glove weighs more than the empire." - Honoré de Balzac

"Nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with half a mind, with a faint heart, and with a lame endeavor." - Isaac Barrow

"Tolerance consists of seeing certain things with your heart instead of with your eyes." - Orlando A. Battistam, fully Orlando Aloysius Battista, aka O.A. Battista

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder." - T. H. Bayly, fully Thomas Haynes Bayly

"Those who refuse the long drudgery of thought, and think with the heart rather than the head, are ever the most fiercely dogmatic in tone." -

"Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman." -

"In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. In here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me? " - Saul Bellow

"Every man must, in a measure, be alone in the world. No heart was ever cast in the same mould as that which we bear within us." - Eric Berne, born as Leonard Bernstein

"A man must purify his heart before he prays." -

"As he thinks in his heart, so is he." -

"He that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast." -

"Where your treasure is, there will your heart also be." -

"All the principles which religion teaches, and all the habits which it forms, are favorable to strength of mind. It will be found that whatever purifies fortifies also the heart." - Hugh Blair

"Graceful, particularly in youth, is the tear of sympathy, and the heart that melts at the tale of woe; we should not permit ease and indulgence to contract our affections, and wrap us up in selfish enjoyment. But we should accustom ourselves to think of the distresses of human life, of the solitary cottage, the dying parent, and the weeping orphan. Nor ought we ever to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty." - Hugh Blair

"Nothing, except what flows from the heart, can render even external manners truly pleasing." - Hugh Blair

"Sentiment and principle are often mistaken for each other, though, in fact, they widely differ. Sentiment is the virtue of ideas; principle the virtue of action. Sentiment has its seat in the had; principle, in the heart. Sentiment suggest fine harangues and subtle distinctions; principle conceives just notions, and performs good actions in consequence of them. Sentiment refines away the simplicity of truth, and the plainness of piety; and "gives us virtue in words, and vice in deeds."" - Hugh Blair

"That discipline which corrects the eagerness of worldly passions, which fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, which enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes to it matter of enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity than all the provisions which we can make of the goods of fortune." - Hugh Blair

"A woman’s head is always influenced by her heart; but a man’s heart is always influenced by his head." - Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Lady Blessington, born Margaret Power

"There is no knowledge for which so great a price is paid as a knowledge of the world; and no one ever became an adept in it except at the expense of a hardened or a wounded heart." - Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Lady Blessington, born Margaret Power

"Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence." - Léon Bloy