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

Jeremy Collier

Truth is the band of union and the basis of human happiness. Without this virtue there is no reliance upon language, no confidence in friendship, no security in promises and oaths.

Character | Confidence | Language | Security | Truth | Virtue | Virtue |

William Congreve

The essence of all education is self-discovery and self-control. When education helps an individual to discover his own powers and limitations and, shows him how to get out of his heredity its largest and best possibilities, it will fulfill its real function, when children are taught not merely to know things but particularly to know themselves, not merely how to do things but especially how to compel themselves to do things, they may be said to be really educated. For this sort of education there is demanded rigorous discipline of the powers of observation, of the reason, and especially of the will.

Character | Children | Control | Discipline | Discovery | Education | Heredity | Individual | Observation | Reason | Self | Self-control | Will |

George Canning

Active beneficence is a virtue of easier practice than forbearance after having conferred, or than thankfulness after having received a benefit. I know not, indeed, whether it be a greater and more difficult exercise of magnanimity for the one party to act as if he had forgotten, or for the other as if he constantly remembered the obligation.

Character | Forbearance | Magnanimity | Obligation | Practice | Thankfulness | Virtue | Virtue |

Avraham Moshe Chevroni

Whatever a person does without enthusiasm and joy is not truly considered doing. When a person lacks joy for what he is doing, everything he does will be difficult for him and he will not do it properly.

Character | Enthusiasm | Joy | Will |

Yehuda Leib Chasman

Envy is such a part of many people’s personalities that it is not reasonable to expect them to completely eradicate this trait. Rather, they should channel it in a positive direction. Let them envy those with wisdom so they will try to gain more wisdom.

Character | Envy | People | Will | Wisdom |

Thomas Chalmers

Thousands of men breathe, move, and live, pass off the stage of life, and are heard of no more. Why? they do not partake of good in the world, and none were blessed by them; none could point to them as the means of their redemption; not a line they wrote, not a word they spake, could be recalled; and so they perished: their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man immortal? Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write your name, in kindness, love, and mercy, on the hearts of thousands you come in contact with year by year: you will never be forgotten. No! your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind you as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven.

Character | Darkness | Deeds | Good | Life | Life | Light | Man | Means | Men | Redemption | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Will | World | Deeds | Blessed |

Rabbi Chanina Bar Chama NULL

He whose deeds exceed his wisdom, his wisdom shall endure; but he whose wisdom exceeds his deeds, his wisdom will not endure.

Character | Deeds | Will | Wisdom | Deeds |

William Ellery Channing

All virtue lies in individual action, in inward energy, in self-determination.

Action | Character | Determination | Energy | Individual | Self | Self-determination | Virtue | Virtue |

Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz

There is no greater joy for a wise man than the joy of improving his character traits.

Character | Joy | Man | Wise |

William Ellery Channing

Error is discipline through which we advance.

Character | Discipline | Error |

Yehuda Leib Chasman

When one lives a life focused on gaining, wisdom, his entire life is full of joy and happiness.

Character | Joy | Life | Life | Wisdom |

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 |

Howard Cosell, fully Howard William Cosell, born Howard William Cohen

Courage takes many forms. there is physical courage, there is moral courage. Then there is a still higher type of courage - the courage to brave pain, to live with it, to never let others know of it and to still find joy in life; to wake up in the morning with an enthusiasm for the day ahead.

Character | Courage | Day | Enthusiasm | Joy | Life | Life | Pain |

Richard E. Byrd, fully Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr.

A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes he is no longer indispensable.

Character | Indispensable | Man | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

I see nothing worth living for but the divine virtue which endures and surrenders all things for truth, duty, and mankind.

Character | Duty | Mankind | Nothing | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Worth |

John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

Words cannot express the joy which a friend imparts; they only can know who have experienced. A friend is dearer than the light of heaven, for it would be better for us that the sun were exhausted than that we should be without friends.

Better | Character | Friend | Heaven | Joy | Light | Words |

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

Three things too much and three too little are pernicious to man: to speak much and know little; to spend much and have little; to presume much and be worth little.

Character | Little | Man | Worth |

Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

True wisdom comes from the overcoming of suffering and sin. All true wisdom is therefore touched with sadness.

Character | Sadness | Sin | Suffering | Wisdom |

Chayim of Volozhin, also Chaim ben Yuitzchok of Volozhin or Chaim Ickovits NULL

Be careful that joy does not turn into frivolity which leads to transgressing.

Character | Frivolity | Joy |

William Congreve

Thought precedes the will to think, and error lives ere reason can be born. Reason, the power to guess at right and wrong, the twinkling lamp of wand'ring life, that winks and wakes by turns fooling the follower 'twixt shade and shining.

Character | Error | Power | Reason | Right | Thought | Will | Wisdom |