Great Throughts Treasury

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

Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, de jure 13th Baron Latimer and 5th Baron Willoughby de Broke

British Elizabethan Poet, Dramatist and Statesman

"Pride, like ambition, is sometimes virtuous and sometimes vicious, according the character in which it is found, and the object to which it is directed. As a principle, it is the parent of almost every virtue and every vice - everything that pleases and displeases in mankind; and as the effects are so very different, nothing is more easy than to discover, even to ourselves, whether the pride that produces them is virtuous or vicious the first object of virtuous pride is rectitude, and the next independence."

"‘Truth will prevail.’ It may be true; but some people, I believe, think her a very slow worker; and little will the satisfaction of her prevailing be to you, if you happen to be ruined in your reputation or fortune while she is at work."

"A fish will sometimes with pleasure rise out of his element, and spring into ours: so a man will sometimes with pleasure rise from prejudice and falsehood, into the sphere of reason and truth. But the fish will most naturally and joyfully dive again into his element of water; and the man as joyfully and naturally into his element of prejudice and falsehood."

"A very small offence may be a just cause for great resentment: it is often much less the particular instance which is obnoxious to us than the proof it carries with it of the general tenor and disposition of the mind from whence it sprung."

"A generous man places the benefits he confers beneath his feet; those he receives, nearest his heart."

"And out of mind as soon as out of sight."

"Avarice starves its possessor to fatten those who come after, and who are eagerly awaiting the demise of the accumulator."

"Every character is in some respects uniform, and in others inconsistent; and it is only by the study both of the uniformity and inconsistency, and a comparison of them with each other, that the knowledge of man is acquired."

"Even honest men mistake oftener in their own favor than in other peoples."

"Genius always looks forward, and not only sees what is, but what necessarily will be."

"Genius, like a planet, takes a wide circuit through the pure expanse of nature, and visits not regions only, but whole worlds, which SENSE does not know to exist."

"Hard-hearted minds relent and rigor's tears abound, and envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault was found. Knowledge her light hath lost, valor hath slain her knight, Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world's delight."

"Habit is the cement of society, the comfort of life, and, alas! the root of error."

"How happy is it for us, that the admiration of others should depend so much more on their ignorance than our perfection!"

"Have you never seen a strange unconnected deformed representation of a figure, which seen in another point of view, became proportioned and agreeable? It is the picture of man."

"If they who understand the utmost refinement of any art will enjoy the perfection of it in a manner superior to other men, will they not amply pay for that advantage in feeling more than other men the imperfection of it, which in the natural course of things must so much oftener fall in their way?"

"In night when colors all to black are cast, distinction lost, or gone down with the light; the eye — a watch to inward senses placed, not seeing, yet still having power of sight — gives vain alarums to the inward sense."

"It by no means follows that we acted from reason, because good reasons can be produced for what we did."

"It by no means follows, that because two men utter the same words, they have precisely the same idea which they mean to express: language is inadequate to the variety of ideas which are conceived by different minds, and which, could they be expressed, would produce a new variety of characteristic differences between man and man."

"It has been said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they are more lasting than those of the body; but I do not remember to have heard it said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they make those of the body more lasting."

"How seldom is generosity perfect and pure! How often do men give because it throws a certain inferiority on those who receive, and superiority on themselves!"

"If Nature did not take delight in blood, she would have made more easy ways to good. We that are bound by vows and by promotion, with pomp of holy sacrifice and rites, to teach belief in good and still devotion, to preach of heaven's wonders and delights — Yet, when each of us in his own heart looks, he finds the God there far unlike his books."

"If the human mind naturally produces noisome weeds, it also produces flowers and fruit; and ... the best method to mend the soil in general, is for each of us to cultivate his own particular spot."

"Human knowledge is the parent of doubt."

"I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others."

"It is in numberless instances happier to have a false opinion which we believe true, than a true one of which we doubt."

"It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one than a little; a great deal may rouse you to remove what a little will only accustom you to endure."

"It is so much in the nature of men to overreach and deceive one another, that their very sports and plays are founded on that principle."

"It is, methinks, worthy the curiosity of a nice observer of human nature, to watch the course of a principle in the mind, and mark its various effects; now cherishing a virtue, now a vice; now establishing order, and now inclining to irregularity: to trace it like a stream from a source, through all its windings; each of which, those who see but a part, distinguish by a different name, and supposed to be fed by a different spring."

"Let us not expect men to see truth before it is shown them; they do not see it afterwards."

"Love is no true-made looking-glass which perfect yields the shape we bring; it ugly shows us all that was, and flatters every future thing."

"It would be doing cunning too much honor to call it an inferior species of true discernment."

"It's a hard talk for a man to say I don't know; it hurts his pride: but should not the pretending he does, hurt it much more?"

"Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?"

"Love will sacrifice more to others than friendship, but then it exacts more from them."

"Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?"

"Man seems to be made neither to live alone nor with others."

"Men may be divided into two classes, according to the use they make of reason. Some men employ reason, or, as it is more commonly called, SENSE, to defend error by argument; others employ it, to discover and distinguish truth: the power, therefore, which we call SENSE, may exist without its use; and it is only valuable, in proportion as the mind is candid, dispassionate, impartial, and unprejudiced."

"Men often prove the violence of their own prejudices, even by the violence with which they attack the prejudices of other people."

"Might not most men be as well named boys grown old?"

"No fruit has a more precise marked period of maturity, than love; if neglected to be gathered at that time, it will certainly fall to the ground and die away."

"No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself."

"No two things can be so contradictory, so much at variance as truth and falsehood; and yet none are so mixed and united."

"O wearisome condition of humanity!"

"Now rime, the son of rage, which art no kin to skill, and endless grief, which deads my life, yet knows not how to kill, go seek that hapless tomb, which if ye hap to find, salute the stones that keep the bones that held so good a mind."

"One great disadvantage to the cause of truth is its’ being so often in the hands of liars."

"One great reason why men practice generosity so little in the world is their finding so little there. Generosity is catching; and if so many men escape it, it is in a great degree from the same reason the countrymen escape the smallpox, because they meet no one to give it to them."

"Our companions please us less from the charms we find in their conversation, than from those they find in ours."

"Oh wearisome condition of Humanity! Born under one law, to another bound, vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity, created sick, commanded to be sound: what meaneth Nature by these diverse laws? Passion and reason self-division cause. Is it the mask or majesty of Power to make offences that it may forgive?"

"Our present evil is generally thought the worst of our evils, and all our own evils worse than other peoples."