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

Geoffrey Chaucer

For how might sweetness ever have been known to him who never tasted bitterness? Felicity exists for those alone who first have suffered sorrow and distress... By opposites does one in wisdom grow.

Bitterness | Character | Distress | Sorrow | Wisdom |

Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz

Physical pleasures can give a person pleasure and happiness to some degree, but this cannot compete with the elevated pleasure that one can derive when one toils in wisdom.

Character | Pleasure | Wisdom | Happiness |

Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of self.

Character | Life | Life | Self |

Fred Pierce Corson

If we think of life as a journey and consider it to be the opportunity for getting from where we are to where we want to be, we will have a working rule that provides us with both a purpose and expanding possibilities for our lives.

Character | Journey | Life | Life | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Rule | Will | Think |

Margaret M. Butts

Learn to laugh. And most of all, learn to laugh at yourself. The person who can give a riotous account of his own faux pas, will never have to listen to another's embarrassing account of it. He will rarely know the sting of humiliation. His a delight to be with, but more important, he is enjoying his own life, and applying to his ills and errors the most soothing balm the human spirit has devised - laughter.

Character | Important | Laughter | Life | Life | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Learn |

William Ellery Channing

Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge; and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.

Character | Growth | Ignorance | Knowledge | Mind | Nature | Wisdom |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

There have been men who could play delightful music on one string of the violin, but there never was a man who could produce the harmonies of heaven in his soul by a one-stringed virtue.

Character | Heaven | Man | Men | Music | Play | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |

Pierre Charron

Mutability is the a badge of infirmity. It is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike.

Character | Design | Man | Mutability |

William Ellery Channing

The great duty of God’s children is to love one another. This duty on earth takes the name and form of the law of humanity. We are to recognize all men as brethren, no matter where born, or under what sky, or institution or religion they may live. Every man belongs to the race, and owes a duty to mankind... Men cannot, by combining themselves into narrower or larger societies, sever the sacred, blessed bond which joins them to their kind... The law of humanity must reign; over the assertion of all human rights.

Assertion | Character | Children | Duty | Earth | God | Humanity | Law | Love | Man | Mankind | Men | Race | Religion | Rights | Sacred | Blessed |

William Ellery Channing

What blessedness it is to dwell amidst this transparent air, which the eye can pierce without limit, amidst these floods of pure, soft, cheering light, under this immeasurable arch of heaven, and in sight of these countless stars! An infinite universe is each moment opened to our view. And this universe is the sing and symbol of Infinite Power, Intelligence, Purity, Bliss, and Love.

Blessedness | Character | Heaven | Intelligence | Light | Love | Power | Purity | Universe |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

No more important duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions.

Character | Convictions | Duty | Important | Life | Life | Loyalty | Loyalty | Wisdom |

Pierre Charron

Pleasure and pain, though directly opposite, are yet so contrived by nature as to be constant companions; and it is a fact that the same motions and muscles of the face are employed both in laughing and crying.

Character | Nature | Pain | Pleasure |

George Barrell Cheever

As character to be used for eternity must be formed in time and in good time, so good habits to be used for happiness in this life must be formed early; and then they will be a treasure to be desired in the house of the wise, and an oil of life in their dwellings.

Character | Eternity | Good | Life | Life | Time | Will | Wise | Happiness |

Allen E. Claxton

The failure of our modern world, with its moral and ethical collapse, may be traced directly to our spiritual ignorance and moral disobedience. The ethical conditions under which we live are disgracefully unsanitary. It is futile to expect peace and goodwill on earth while our homes are infested with the germs of selfishness, irreverence and lust. The world-wide epidemic of hatred, cruelty, murder and war is the inevitable result of our moral and spiritual disobedience. We cannot break the laws of the universe with impunity.

Character | Cruelty | Disobedience | Earth | Failure | Ignorance | Inevitable | Lust | Murder | Peace | Selfishness | Universe | War | World | Failure | Murder |

Pierre Cornielle

The more kindness we heap upon one who hates us, the more we arm him to betray us.

Character | Kindness |

Pablo Casals, fully Pau Casals i Defilló

The truly important things in life - love, beauty, and one's own uniqueness - are constantly being overlooked.

Beauty | Character | Important | Life | Life | Love |