Great Throughts Treasury

"The price of greatness is responsibility." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

"Peace at any price can be the abnegation of morality entirely, the refusal of even a negative contribution to righteousness." - P. T. Forsyth, fully Peter Taylor Forsyth

"Mental illness is the price you pay for being absorbed in yourself. Mental health is your reward for devoting yourself to your duties and to the welfare of others." -

"The price we pay for liberty is that so far as a man is free to do right he is also free to do wrong." - L. T. Hobhouse, fully Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse

"The pearl of great price always begins as a pain in the oyster’s stomach!" - John E. Large, fully John Ellis Large

"We are so tempted to see ourselves as fixable, perfectible brains. But the loss of our souls is a high price to pay." - Tanya Luhrmann, fully Tanya Marie Luhrmann

"If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it." - J. P. Morgan, fully John Pierpont Morgan

"It’s the tough decisions that really test our character, for character is revealed when the price of doing the right thing is more than we want to pay." - John Naber, fully John Phillips Naber

"All that has a price is of little value." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"It is reasonable to concur where Conscience does not forbid compliance; for Conformity is at least a Civic Virtue... it is a Weakness in Religion and Government where it is carried to Things of an Indifferent Nature, since... Liberty is always the Price of it." - William Penn

"We pay a terrible price for not forgiving. Unfortunately, the people whom we hold responsible for these unfinished feelings usually don’t suffer because of our feelings." - Richard “Rick” Stone

"The most distinctive qualities of the human species are extremely high intelligence, language, culture, and reliance on long-term social contracts. In combination they gave early Homo sapiens a decisive edge of all competing animal species, but they also exacted a price we continue to pay, composed of the shocking recognition of the self, of the finiteness of personal existence, and the chaos of the environment." -

"The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand." - Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." -

"Every positive value has its price in negative terms; the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima." -

"I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen." -

"The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it." - Adam Smith

"The whole annual produce of the land and labor of every country, or what comes to the same thing, the whole price of that annual produce, naturally divides itself... into three parts; the rent of the land, the wages of labor, and the profits of stock; and constitutes a revenue to three different orders of people; to those who live by rent, to those who live by wages, and to those who live by profit. These are the three great, original, and constituent orders of every civilized society, from whose revenue that of every other order is ultimately derived." - Adam Smith

"The real price of every thing… is the toil and trouble of acquiring it." - Adam Smith

"Happiness is growth through the enlargement of one's comfort zone, the expansion of what one has attempted, and the self-confidence to attempt even more... It is unfortunate but indisputable truth that happiness often comes with a price... You will find creating a life of happiness is not one large, overwhelming task, but rather a series of small, manageable steps." -

"Happiness is growth through the enlargement of one's comfort zone, the expansion of what one has attempted, and the self-confidence to attempt even more... It is unfortunate but indisputable truth that happiness often comes with a price... You will find creating a life of happiness is not one large, overwhelming task, but rather a series of small, manageable steps." - Alan Epstein

"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things; knows not the livid loneliness of fear, nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings." - Amelia Earhart, fully Amelia Mary Earhart

"Constant alertness is needed. “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom” - freedom from the ego-mind: wordlings have made a catch-phrase out of what is a truth." - Arthur W Osborn

"Every time history repeats itself the price goes up." - Author Unknown NULL

"If you really do put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price." - Author Unknown NULL

"Take time to laugh, it is the music of the soul. Take time to think, it is the source of power. Take time to play, it is the source of perpetual youth. Take time to read, it is the fountain of wisdom. Take time to pray, it is the greatest power on earth. Take time to love and be loved, it is a God-given privilege. Take time to be friendly, it is the road to happiness. Take time to give, it is too short a day to be selfish. Take time to work, it is the price of success." - Author Unknown NULL

"Better be cheated in the price than in the [quality of the] goods." - Baltasar Gracián

"Work is the price that is paid for reputation." - Baltasar Gracián

"No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it." - Charles Caleb Colton

"Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who ‘forgives’ you - out of love - takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice. The price you must pay for your own liberation through another’s sacrifice, is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, irrespective of the consequences yourself." - Dag Hammarskjöld

"We have peace as we abhor pusillanimity; but not peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive of his material body. Chains are worse than bayonets." - Douglas William Jerrold

"The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less." -

"Love is the true price of love." - George Herbert

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"Vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but of success of any sort." - Henry Ward Beecher

"If you attempt to beat a man down and so get his goods lower than a fair price, you are attempting to commit burglary as much as though you broke into his shop to take the things without paying for them. There is cheating on both sides of the counter, and generally less behind it than before." - Henry Ward Beecher

"It is hard to fight with anger; for what it wants it buys at the price of soul." - Heraclitus or Heraclitus of Ephesus NULL

"Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too." - Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov

"The moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last." - James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude

"Contentment is a pearl of great price, and whoever procures it at the expense of ten thousand desires makes a wise and happy purchase." - John Balguy

"All pleasure must be bought at the price of pain. The difference between false and true pleasure is this; for the true, the price is paid before you enjoy it; for the false, after you enjoyed it." - John Foster, fully John Watson Foster

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." - John Philpot Curran

"The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and be bought for it." - John Ruskin

"Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser." - Joseph Addison

"They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price." - Kahlil Gibran

"Universal service is the price of peace." - Lewis Mumford

"It goes somehow against the grain to learn that cost-benefit analyses can be done neatly on lakes, meadows, nesting gannets, even whole oceans. It is hard enough to confront the environmental options ahead, and the hard choices, but even harder when the price tags are so visible. Even the new jargon is disturbing: it hurts the spirit, somehow, to read the word environments, when the plural means that there are so many alternatives there to be sorted through, as in a market, and voted on." - Lewis Thomas

"It is difficult to set bounds to the price unless you first set bounds to the wish." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

"The price of eternal vigilance is indifference." -

"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills