Great Throughts Treasury

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

Related Quotes

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.

Character | Revenge | Soul | Forgive |

Bob Edwards, fully Robert Alan "Bob" Edwards

People are always ready to admit a man's ability after he gets there.

Ability | Character | Man | People |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

Character | Choice | Growth |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

Pleasure comes from obtaining what we feel we are lacking. We have the ability to choose our answer to the question, “What am I lacking right now?” Some people answer materialistically. It is wiser to choose to focus on your lack of spiritual accomplishments and then you can derive pleasure from meeting those needs.

Ability | Character | Focus | People | Pleasure | Question | Right |

John Dewey

The dominant vocation of all human beings at all times is living - intellectual and moral growth.

Character | Growth |

Albert Einstein

It is a welcome symptom in an age which is commonly denounced as materialistic, that it makes heroes of men whose goals lie wholly in the intellectual and moral sphere. This proves that knowledge and justice are ranked above wealth and power by a large section of the human race.

Age | Character | Goals | Human race | Justice | Knowledge | Men | Power | Race | Wealth |

Martin Esslin, fully Martin Julius Esslin

The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaninglessness.

Ability | Character | Dignity | Man | Reality |

John Dewey

Moral principles that exalt themselves by degrading human nature are in effect committing suicide.

Character | Human nature | Nature | Principles | Suicide |

Alexandre Dumas, born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie

All human wisdom is summed up in two words - wait and hope.

Character | Hope | Wisdom | Words |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion: a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.

Character | Discernment | Knowledge | Soul |

e. e. cummings, fully Edward Estlin Cummings

To be nobody-but-myself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

Battle | Character | Day | Fighting | Means | World |

Lammot du Pont

People may change their minds as often as their coats, and new sets of rules of conduct may be written every week, but the fact remains that human nature has not changed and does not change, that inherent human beliefs stay the same; the fundamental rules of human conduct continue to hold.

Change | Character | Conduct | Human nature | Nature | People |

Albert Einstein

What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Organic | Question | Religion | Sense |

Albert Einstein

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.

Character | Self | Sense | Value |

Francis Fane, fully Sir Francis Fane of Fulbeck

When the soul grants what reason makes her see, that is true faith, what’s more’s credulity.

Character | Faith | Reason | Soul |

Albert Einstein

It is only to the individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.

Character | Destiny | Individual | Rule | Soul |