Great Throughts Treasury

"Even though we personally should do what we can to flee from honor, we still have an obligation to treat other people with honor and respect." - Yisroel Salanter Lipkin

"Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy." - Albert Schweitzer

"Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is more the product of the brain, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart that rules in life." - Samuel Smiles

"The crown and glory of life is character. It is the noblest possession of a man, constituting a rank in itself, and estate in the general good will; dignifying every station, and exacting every position in society. It exercises a greater power than wealth and secures all the honor without the jealousies of fame. It carries with it an influence which always tells; for it is the result of proved honor, rectitude and consistency - qualities which, perhaps more than any others, command the general confidence and respect of mankind." - Samuel Smiles

"He who cannot rule his passions, nor hold them in check out of respect for the law, while he may be excusable on the ground of weakness, is incapable of enjoying conformity of spirit and knowledge and love of God; and he is lost inevitably." -

"Politeness is but kind feeling toward others, acted out in our intercourse with them. We are always polite to those we respect and esteem." - Johann Spurzheim, fully Johann Gaspar Spurzheim or Kaspar or Caspar

"For he who has acquired the habit of lying or deceiving his father, will do the same with less remorse to others. I believe that it is better to bind your children to you by a feeling of respect, and by gentleness, then by fear." -

"In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself. Most rich men in democracies are therefore constantly haunted by the desire of obtaining wealth, and they naturally turn their attention to trade and manufactures, which appear to offer the readiest and most efficient means of success. In this respect they share the instincts of the poor without feeling the same necessities; say, rather, they feel the most imperious of all necessities, that of not sinking in the world." -

"Ideology is not the product of thought; it is the habit or the ritual of showing respect for certain formulas to which, for various reasons having to do with emotional safety, we have every strong ties of whose meaning and consequences in actuality we have no clear understanding." - Lionel Trilling

"We are offended and resent it when people do not respect us; and yet no man, deep down in the privacy of his heart, has any considerable respect for himself." - Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

"Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them." -

"Respect wears itself out, just as love does." -

"Every virtue gives a man a degree of felicity in some kind: honesty gives a man a good report; justice, estimation; prudence, respect; courtesy and liberality, affection; temperance gives health; fortitude, a quiet mind, not to be moved by any adversity." - Francis Walsingham, fully Sir Francis Walsingham

"Raised voices lower esteem. Hot tempers cool friendships. Loose tongues stretch truth. Swelled heads shrink influence. Sharp words dull respect." -

"There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry which nourishes only weak pride; as there is also a care for posterity, which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low and groveling vanity. But there is also a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors, which elevates the character and improves the heart." - Daniel Webster

"A weak mind is ambitious of envy, a strong one of respect." - Edward Wigglesworth

"The new three R’s: responsibility, restraint, respect." - Montel Williams

"When a law is changed, the binding power of the law is diminished, in so far as custom is abolished. Therefore human law should never be changed, unless, in some way or other, the common welfare be compensated according to the extent of the harm done in this respect." -

"Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we don't value the sun for its height." - Kenneth Eldon Bailey

"Never respect men merely for their riches, but rather for their philanthropy; we do not value the sun for its height, but for its use." - Gamaliel Bailey

"You have to live on twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness - the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends! - depends on that!" - Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett

"In one important respect a man is fortunate in being poor. His responsibility to God is so much the less." - John Christian Bovee

"If this life is unhappy, it is a burden to us, which it is difficult to bear; if it is in every respect happy, it is dreadful to be deprived of it; so that in either case the result is the same, for we must exist in anxiety and apprehension." - Jean de La Bruyère

"Respect is love in plain clothes." -

"That which comes into the world to disturb nothing deserves neither respect nor patience." - René Char

"The acceptance of women as authority figures or as role models is an important step I female education... It is this process of identification, respect, and then self-respect that promotes growth." -

"When we abandon the thought of immortality we at least have cast out fear. We gain a certain dignity and self-respect. We regard our fellow travelers as companions in the pleasures and tribulations of life... We gain kinship with the world." - Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow

"There is something so beautiful in trust that even the most hardened liar must needs feel a certain respect for those who confide in him." - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

"Genius is entitled to respect only when it promotes the peace and improves the happiness of mankind." - Robert Devereux, Lord Essex, 2nd Earl of Essex

"Schools exploit you because they tap your power and use it to perpetuate society’s trip, while they teach you not to respect your own... Schools petrify society because their method, characterized by coercion from the top down, works against any substantial social change... Schools petrify society because students, through them, learn to adjust unquestioningly to institutions." - Jerry Farber

"All the value of education rests in the respect for the physical, intellectual and moral will of the child." - Francisco Ferrer y Guardia

"One intellectual excitement has, however, been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen." - Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher

"If you have some respect for people as they are, you ought to be and could be more effective in helping them to become better than they are." - Howard Gardner, fully Howard Earl Gardner

"A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"He that cannot decidedly say, "No," when tempted to evil, is on the highway to ruin. He loses the respect even of those who would tempt him, and becomes but the pliant tool and victim of their evil designs." - Josiah Johnson "J." Hawes

"Self-respect, the corner-stone of all virtue." - John Herschel, fully Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet

"In the pioneer days of our history it was easy to love one's neighbor and respect his rights, when possibly the neighbor lived at a distance of four or five miles and the relations were not intimate enough to occasion a clash of interests. Now one finds that society rather than another individual is his neighbor." - John Grier Hibben

"A house becomes a home through love and respect among its residents, not from a stylish address or a motto on the wall." - Ralph E. Howland, Jr.

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." - Thomas Jefferson

"Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency." -

"Wealth is nothing in itself; it is not useful but when it departs from us; its value is found only in that which it can purchase. As to corporeal enjoyment, money can neither open new avenues of pleasure, nor block up the passages of anguish. Disease and infirmity still continue to torture and enfeeble, perhaps exasperated by luxury, or promoted by softness. With respect to the mind, it has rarely been observed that wealth contributes much to quicken the discernment or elevate the imagination, but may, by hiring flattery, or laying diligence asleep, confirm error and harden stupidity." -

"If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself; about what you want, what you like, what you respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose." - Charles Kingsley

"He is no true man who ever treats women with anything but the profoundest respect. She is no true woman who cannot inspire and does not take care to enforce this. Any real rivalry of the sexes is the sheerest folly and most unnatural nonsense." - Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine

"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." - Aldo Leopold

"Suspect all and respect all." - Joshua ben Levi, or Yehoshua ben Levi

"I found that a hospital is probably the most difficult environment in which to afford a really good death. Hospitals are meant to preserve life; death is an enemy there. Death is not treated with much respect, with much compassion. There’s a lot of fear surrounding death. Death is a failure in a hospital." -

"If at any time all labor should cease, and all existing provision be equally divided among the people, at the end of a single year there could scarcely be one human being left alive - all would have perished by want of subsistence... Universal idleness would speedily result in universal ruin; and ... useless labor is, in this respect, the same as idleness." - Abraham Lincoln

"If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem." - Abraham Lincoln

"If there remains an eternity to us after the short revolution of time we so swiftly run over here, ‘tis clear that all the happiness that can be imagined in this fleeting state is not valuable in respect of the future." - John Locke

"The fundamental rights, like the right to existence and life; the right to personal freedom or to conduct one’s own life as master of oneself and of one’s acts, responsible for them before God and the law of the community; the right to the pursuit of the perfection of moral and rational human life; the right to keep one’s body whole; the right to private ownership of material goods, which is a safeguard of the liberties of the individual; the right to marry according to one’s choice and to raise a family which will be assured of the liberties due it; the right of association, the respect for human dignity in each individual, whether or not he represents an economic value for society - all these rights are rooted in the vocation of the person (a spiritual and free agent) to the order of absolute values and to a destiny superior to time." - Jacques Maritain