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

Mateo Alemán, fully Mateo Alemán y de Enero

That poverty which is not the daughter of the spirit is but the mother of shame and reproach; it is a disreputation that drowns all the other good parts that are in man; it is a disposition to all kind of evil; it is a man’s greatest foe.

Character | Daughter | Evil | Good | Man | Mother | Poverty | Shame | Spirit |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and a vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.

Body | Character | Fame | Fortune | Judgment | Life | Life | Oblivion | Perception | Soul | Time |

Christian Nestell Bovee

The extent of poverty in the world is much exaggerated. Our sensitiveness makes half our poverty; our fears - anxieties for ills that never happen - a greater part of the other half.

Character | Poverty | World |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Poverty is only contemptible when it is felt to be so. Doubtless the best way to make our poverty respectable is to seem never to feel it as an evil.

Character | Evil | Poverty |

Jeremy Collier

Those who despise fame seldom deserve it. We are apt to undervalue the purchase we cannot reach, to conceal our poverty the better. It is a spark which kindles upon the best fuel, and burns brightest in the bravest breast.

Better | Character | Despise | Fame | Poverty |

Euripedes NULL

Inside the souls of wealthy men bleak famine lives while minds of stature struggle trapped in starving bodies. How then can man distinguish man, what test can he use? The test of wealth? That measure means poverty of mind; of poverty? The pauper owns one thing, the sickness of his condition, a compelling teacher of evil; by nerve in war? Yet who, when a spear is cast across his face, will stand to witness his companion’s courage? We can only toss our judgments random on the wind.

Character | Courage | Distinguish | Evil | Man | Means | Men | Mind | Poverty | Struggle | War | Wealth | Will | Witness | Teacher |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

All ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for their children; for poverty is not only a great evil, but tends to its own increase by leading to recklessness in marriage.

Character | Children | Evil | Marriage | Poverty | Recklessness |

Edward Everett

Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity.

Blessings | Character | Conduct | Fame | Posterity | Public | Success | Virtue | Virtue |

William Cowper

Good sense, good health, good conscience, and good fame - all these belong to virtue, and all prove that virtue has a title to your love.

Character | Conscience | Fame | Good | Health | Love | Sense | Title | Virtue | Virtue |

Charles de Saint-Évremond, fully Charles Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Évremond

We want fewer things to live in poverty with satisfaction, than to live magnificently in riches.

Character | Poverty | Riches |

Jerome P. Fleishman

Do you know what real poverty is? It is never to have a big thought or a generous impulse.

Character | Impulse | Poverty | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Benjamin Franklin

Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.

Character | Laziness | Poverty |

David Hume

Vanity is so closely allied to virtue and to love the fame of laudable actions approaches so near the love of laudable actions for their own sake, that these passions are more capable of mixture than any other kinds of affection; and it is almost impossible to have the latter without some degree of the former.

Character | Fame | Love | Virtue | Virtue |

Victor Hugo

For man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes.

Character | Isolation | Life | Life | Man | Misfortune | Poverty |

William James

We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient realization of poverty could have meant; the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paving our way by what we are and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly, - the more athletic trim, in short, the fighting shape.

Character | Fighting | Indifference | Life | Life | Poverty | Power | Right | Soul |

Anna Jameson

It is not poverty so much as pretence that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up a hollow show that must soon come to an end. Have the courage to appear poor, and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting.

Character | Courage | Man | Mind | Poverty | Struggle |

Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

Men do not easily rise whose poverty hinders their merit.

Character | Men | Merit | Poverty |

Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

The thirst for fame is much greater than that for virtue; for who would embrace virtue itself if you take away its rewards.

Character | Fame | Virtue | Virtue |