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

William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker

Your greatness is measured by your kindness - Your education and intellect by your modesty - Your ignorance is betrayed by your suspicions and prejudices - Your real caliber is measured by the consideration and tolerance you have for others.

Character | Consideration | Education | Greatness | Ignorance | Kindness | Modesty | Intellect |

Jean de La Bruyère

False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.

Character | Deceit | Light | Man | Modesty | Reputation | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

Clarence Shepard Day, Jr.

As to modesty and decency, if we are simians we have done well, considering: but if we are something else - fallen angels - we have indeed fallen far.

Angels | Character | Modesty |

Charles Noel Douglas

By virtue, integrity, perseverance and true modesty it is poss

Character | Integrity | Modesty | Perseverance | Virtue | Virtue |

Henry Fielding

Affectation proceeds from one of these two causes - vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavor to avoid censure, by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues.

Affectation | Appearance | Applause | Censure | Character | Hypocrisy | Order |

Madame Émile de Girardin, Delphine de Girardin, née Gay

Good taste is the modesty of the mind; that is why it cannot be either imitated or acquired.

Character | Good | Mind | Modesty | Taste |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Courage and modesty are the most unequivocal of virtues, for they are of a kind that hypocrisy cannot imitate; they too have this quality in common, that they are expressed by the same color.

Character | Courage | Hypocrisy | Modesty |

Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault

The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts. They bravely unveil their weaknesses, their doubts, their defects. They are courageous. They boldly ride a-tilt against prejudices. They love their fellow-men profoundly. They are generous. They allow their hearts to expand. They have compassion for all forms of suffering. Pity is the very foundation-stone of Genius.

Character | Compassion | Defects | Genius | Hypocrisy | Love | Men | Pity | Suffering | Virtue | Virtue |

Jeremy Taylor

It is a little learning, and but a little, which makes men conclude hastily. Experience and humility teach modesty and fear.

Character | Experience | Fear | Humility | Learning | Little | Men | Modesty | Teach |

Lionel Trilling

The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all vices except this one.

Character | Crime | Hypocrisy | Integrity | Witness | Vice |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

It is very noble hypocrisy not to talk of one's self.

Hypocrisy | Self | Wisdom |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Silence and modesty are very valuable qualities in the art of conversation.

Art | Conversation | Modesty | Qualities | Silence | Wisdom | Art |

Waldo Beach, fully William Waldo Beach

It is not just negative inertia and caution which lie behind racial discrimination, but the positive counterfaiths which produce them. The “conflicting valuations” turn out to be a warfare of the gods in the soul of man. Ultimately the racial problem is not one of hypocrisy but idolatry.

Caution | Hypocrisy | Man | Soul | Inertia |