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

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The philosopher has to be the bad conscience of his age.

Age | Conscience | Wisdom |

Ramdas, fully Swami Ramdas, born Vittal Rao, aka Beloved Papa NULL

There is no greater victory in the life of a human being than victory over the mind. He who has controlled the gusts of passion that arise within him and the violent actions that proceed therefrom is the real hero.

Hero | Life | Life | Mind | Passion | Wisdom |

Francis Quarles

Demean thyself more warily in thy study than in the street. If thy public actions have a hundred witnesses, thy private have a thousand. The multitude looks but upon thy actions; thy conscience looks into them: the multitude may chance to excuse thee, if not acquire thee; thy conscience will accuse thee, if not condemn thee.

Chance | Conscience | Looks | Public | Study | Will | Wisdom |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only to listen too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body, which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray.

Body | Conscience | Instinct | Man | Nature | Reason | Right | Soul | Wisdom | Afraid |

Rosa Caroline Praed, aka Mrs. Campbell Praed

A man does not entreat for love. It is the irresistible impulse towards each other of two souls, a union in which there is neither conscious giving nor receiving.

Giving | Impulse | Love | Man | Wisdom |

Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, fully Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

Nothing has ever remained of any revolution but what was ripe in the conscience of the masses.

Conscience | Nothing | Revolution | Wisdom |

William Shenstone

It happens a little unluckily that the persons who have the most infinite contempt of money are the same that have the strongest appetite for the pleasures it procures.

Appetite | Contempt | Little | Money | Wisdom |

Margaret Sanger, fully Margaret Higgins Sanger Slee

Custom controls the sexual impulse as it controls no other.

Custom | Impulse | Wisdom |

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury

Truth is the most powerful thing in the world, since even fiction itself must be governed by it, an can only please by its resemblance. The appearance of reality is necessary to make any passion agreeably represented, and to be able to move others we must be moved ourselves, or at least seem to be so, upon some probably grounds.

Appearance | Passion | Reality | Truth | Wisdom | World |

Gardiner Spring

It is no certain evidence, that because the conscience feels the weight of sin, the heart is humbled on account of it; that because the conscience approves of the rectitude of the Divine justice, the heart bows to the Divine sovereignty.

Conscience | Evidence | Heart | Justice | Sin | Wisdom |

H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells

The appetite grows with what it feeds on.

Appetite | Wisdom |

Daniel Webster

Real goodness does not attach itself merely to this life - it points to another world. Political or professional reputation cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offense before God and man is an inheritance for eternity.

Conscience | Eternity | God | Inheritance | Life | Life | Man | Offense | Reputation | Wisdom | World | God |

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

The most sublime labor of poetry is to give sense and passion to insensate things; and it is characteristic of children to take inanimate things in their hands and talk to them in play as if they were living persons... in the world's childhood, men were by nature sublime poets.

Childhood | Children | Labor | Men | Nature | Passion | Play | Poetry | Sense | Wisdom | World |

Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

Democratic institutions awaken and foster a passion for equality which they can never entirely satisfy.

Equality | Passion | Wisdom |

William Allen White

Everyone expects to go further than his father went; everyone expects to be better than he was born and every generation has one big impulse in its heart - to exceed all the other generations of the past in all the things that make life worth living.

Better | Father | Heart | Impulse | Life | Life | Past | Wisdom | Worth |

Henri Frédéric Amiel

No matter! – so long as the world is the work of eternal goodness, and so long as conscience has not deceived us – to give happiness, and to do good, there is our only law, our anchor of salvation, our beacon light, our reason for existing. All religions may crumble away; so long as this survives we have still an ideal, and life is worth living.

Conscience | Eternal | Good | Law | Life | Life | Light | Reason | Salvation | Work | World | Worth |

Cao Ba-Quat

The waves of human passion rise and fall; worldly things are as transitory as passing clouds.

Passion |