Great Throughts Treasury

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

Receive

"Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

"Honor is not that reward of virtue, for which the virtuous work, but they receive honor from men by way of reward, as from those who have nothing greater to offer. But virtue’s true reward is happiness itself, for which the virtuous work, whereas if they worked for honor, it would no longer be virtue, but ambition." -

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

"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." - Adolfo Barcella

"It is more blessed to give than to receive." -

"If you confer a benefit, never remember it; if you receive one, remember it always." -

"By discharging our duty thoroughly and well, subordinating personal desires to principle, and personal ambition to an exalted love of country, we will not only receive the endorsement of the people, but, what is far better, we will deserve their endorsement." - Champ Clark, formally James Beauchamp Clark

"If you try to subdue your selfish motives - anger and so forth - and develop more kindness and compassion for others, ultimately you yourself will benefit more than you would otherwise. So sometimes I say that the wise selfish person should practice this way. Foolish selfish people are always thinking of themselves, and the result is negative. Wise selfish people think of others, help others as much as they can, and the result is that they too receive benefit." -

"Right actions for the future are the best explanations or apologies for wrong ones in the past; the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive." - Tyron Edwards

"A successful man is he who receives a great deal from his fellowmen, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them. The value of a man, however, should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive." - Albert Einstein

"It is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. It is in dying that we are born to eternal life." -

"The idea of life is to give and receive, and if you didn’t have anybody on earth to give to or receive from, then you’d have a very sad life... One of the reasons we’re here is to be part of this process of exchange." - Dizzy Gillespie, born John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie

"Welfare is hated by those who administer it, mistrusted by those who pay for it and held in contempt by those who receive it." - Peter C. Goldmark, Jr.

"A person who is sincerely humble will be constantly happy. A humble person realizes that nothing is owed him, and therefore feels satisfied with what he has. He does not raise his sights to receive what is above him. He constantly has peace of mind and always feels the joy of life." - Rabbi Chayim Meir Hagar

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to receive a great deal, you first have to give a great deal. If each individual will give of himself to whomever he can, wherever he can, in any way that he can, in the long run he will be compensated in the exact proportion he gives." - Ralph A. Hayward

"In giving, we receive, in serving we find our strength, in reaching out we are lifted up." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

"Confidence is the foundation of friendship. If we give it, we will receive it." - Harry E. Humphreys, Jr.

"An honor-seeker is not really interested in self-improvement. He is only interested in gaining approval from others. Hence, he will disregard any fault he has if he knows that others will not notice it. On the other hand, a person who is able to forego his honor is able to focus on truth. His only thought is to do the right thing and he is willing to sacrifice his honor for his principles. Such a person will eventually receive honor, for he will constantly work on improving himself." - Yosef Y. Hurwitz

"In surrender we can both give and receive. Relationships take on a different meaning. We learn to be in someone’s life without being in their dance. A relationship becomes important not because it satisfies personality needs but because it’s the pathway to wholeness." - Gloria D. Karpinski

"Close thine ear against him that shall open his mouth secretly against another. If thou receivest not his words, they fly back and wound the reporter. If thou dost receive them, they fly forward and wound the receiver." - Johann Kaspar Lavater

"In general, we receive impressions only in consequence of motion, and we might establish it as an axiom that, without motion, there is no sensation." - Antoine Lavoisier, fully Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier

"Perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understanding as do from these receive into our understanding as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other sensation, so I call this reflection, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operation within self... These two, I say, vis. external material things, as the objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of reflection, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings." - John Locke

"Self-sacrifice is never entirely unselfish, for the give never fails to receive." - Dolores E. McGuire

"Love cures people. Both the ones who give it, and the ones who receive it." -

"Men may tire themselves in a labyrinth of search, and talk of God; but if we would know Him indeed, it must be from the impressions we receive of Him; and the softer our hearts are, the deeper and livelier those will be upon us." - William Penn

"We like to give in the sunlight and to receive in the dark." - Jean-Antoine Petit-Senn

"They who give, hoping to receive a requital, such as praise or honor... are in reality making a bargain." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

"Many receive advice, only the wise profit by it." - Publius Syrus

"The less gratitude you receive for doing a kind act, the greater the value of the act. True kindness is when we do not receive anything in return for what we do." - Rashi, born Shlomo ben Yitzchok, aka Salomon Isaacides, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki NULL

"The savage lives within himself, while social man lives constantly outside himself, and only knows how to live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his own existence merely from the judgment of others concerning him." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it." -

"We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers." -

"We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to fingers." -

"Avarice is the most opposite of all characters to that of God Almighty, whose alone it is to give and not receive." - William Shenstone

"As for my labors, if they can but wear one impertinence out of human life, destroy a single vice, or give a morning’s cheerfulness to an honest mind - in short, if the world can be but one virtue the better, or in any degree less vicious, or receive from then the smallest addition to their innocent diversions - I shall not think my pains, or indeed my life, to have been spent in vain." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

"Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it." -

"When the heat and motion of blind impulses and passions distract it on all sides, we can neither give nor receive anything truly. But when we find our centre in our soul by the power of self-restraint, by the force that harmonises all warring elements and unifies those that are apart, then all our isolated impressions reduce themselves to wisdom, and all our momentary impulses of heart find their completion in love; then all the petty details of our life reveal an infinite purpose, and all our thoughts and deeds unite themselves inseparably in an internal harmony." -

"The life of a person who demands and pursues approval is full of pain and suffering. Even if he does receive a large amount of approval, he will still demand more. We can say with certainty that not everyone will honor him as much as he would like and he will cause himself much self-imposed misery." - Menachem Taryash

"The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one. The highest wisdom has but one science - the science of the whole - the science explaining the whole creation and man’s place in it. To receive that science it is necessary to purity and renew one’s inner self, and so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to perfect one’s self. And to attain this end, we have the light called conscinece tht God has implanted in our souls." -

"One may receive the information but miss the teaching." - Jean Toomer

"You wake up in the morning, and your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. And no one receives either more or less than you receive." - Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett

"It is more blessed to give than to receive." - Bible or The Bible or Holy Bible NULL

"The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another's smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercise." -

"The rule for every worthwhile man is that no serious job ever shall receive less than his best thought and effort." - William Feather

"Who pleasure gives, shall joy receive." - Benjamin Franklin

"It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"To be sure, if it is the purpose of educators to stifle the child’s power of independent thought as early as possible, in order to produce that ‘good behavior’ which is so highly prized, they cannot do better than deceive children in sexual matters and intimidate them by religious means. The stronger characters will, it is true, withstand these influences; they will become rebels against the authority of their parents and later against every other form of authority. When children do not receive the explanations for which they turn to their elders, they go on tormenting themselves in secret with the problem, and produce attempts at solution in which the truth they have guessed is mixed up in the most extraordinary way with grotesque inventions; or else they whisper confidences to each other which, because of the sense of guilt in the youthful inquirers, stamp everything sexual as horrible and disgusting." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The steady pressure to consume, absorb, participate, receive, by eye, ear, mouth and mail involves a cruelty to intestines, blood pressure, and psyche unparalleled in history. We are being killed with kindness. We are being stifled with culture and material joys." - Herbert Gold

"Let this be understood, then, at starting; that the patient conquest of difficulties which rise in the regular and legitimate channels of business and enterprise is not only essential in securing the success which you seek but it is essential to that preparation of your mind, requisite for the enjoyment of your successes, and for retaining them when gained. So, day by day, and week by week; so month after month, and year after year, work on, and in that progress gain in strength and symmetry, and nerve and knowledge, that when success, patiently and bravely worked for, shall come, it may find you prepared to receive it and keep it." -

"The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.