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

Pierre Charron

Whatever difference there may appear to be in men’s fortunes, there is still a certain compensation of good and ill in all, that makes them equal.

Character | Compensation | Good | Men |

David Hume

All advantages are attended with disadvantages. A universal compensation prevails in all conditions of being and existence.

Character | Compensation | Existence |

Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

An overemphasis on temporal security is a compensation for a loss of the sense of eternal security.

Character | Compensation | Eternal | Security | Sense | Loss |

Christian Nestell Bovee

It is some compensation for great evils that they enforce great lessons.

Compensation | Wisdom |

Pierre Charron

Whatever difference there may appear to be in man's fortunes, there is still a certain compensation of good and ill in all, that makes them equal.

Compensation | Good | Man | Wisdom |

F. Scott Fitzgerald, fully Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

Compensation | Life | Life | Sense | Success | Wisdom |

Sidney Greenberg

We are rewarded not for our good deeds but by our good deeds. The reward for doing good is becoming a better human being. The greatest compensation for any good deed is simply to have done it.

Better | Compensation | Deeds | Good | Reward | Deeds |

Sidney Greenberg

Is there then no reward for living a life of rectitude and uprightness? There is, indeed. We are rewarded not for our good deeds but by our good deeds. The reward for doing good is becoming a better human being. The greatest compensation for any good deed is simply to have done it.

Better | Compensation | Deeds | Good | Life | Life | Reward | Deeds |

Charles Caleb Colton

If it be true that men of strong imaginations are usually dogmatists - and I am inclined to think it is so - it ought to follow that men of weak imaginations are the refers; in which case we should have some compensation for stupidity. But it unfortunately happens that no dogmatist is more obstinate or less open to conviction than a fool.

Compensation | Men | Stupidity | Think |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation but a life. The soul is. Under all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Existence, or God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts, and times within itself.

Balance | Compensation | Existence | God | Life | Life | Nature | Self | Soul | Wit |

H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells

I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed. It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.

Absolute | Change | Comfort | Compensation | Doubt | Habit | Harmony | Instinct | Intelligence | Law | Life | Life | Nature | Need | Property | Question | Quiet | Security | Society | Wealth | World | Society | Intellect | Think |

Max Nordau, fully Max Simon Nordau, born Simon Maximilian Südfeld

If I despised myself, it would be no compensation if everyone saluted me, and if I respect myself, it does not trouble me if others hold me lightly.

Compensation | Respect | Respect | Trouble |

Nikola Tesla

It was the artist, too, who awakened that broad philanthropic spirit which, even in old ages, shone in the teachings of noble reformers and philosophers, that spirit which makes men in all departments and positions work not as much for any material benefit or compensation -- though reason may command this also -- but chiefly for the sake of success, for the pleasure there is in achieving it and for the good they might be able to do thereby to their fellow-men. Through his influence types of men are now pressing forward, impelled by a deep love for their study, men who are doing wonders in their respective branches, whose chief aim and enjoyment is the acquisition and spread of knowledge, men who look far above earthly things, whose banner is Excelsior! Gentlemen, let us honor the artist; let us thank him, let us drink his health!

Compensation | Enjoyment | Good | Honor | Influence | Love | Men | Pleasure | Reason | Spirit | Work | Old |

Nikola Tesla

The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements. Speaking for myself, I have already had more than my full measure of this exquisite enjoyment; so much, that for many years my life was little short of continuous rapture.

Compensation | Important | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Man | Mind | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Struggle |

Otto von Bismarck, Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg

Beware of sentimental alliances where the consciousness of good deeds is the only compensation for noble sacrifices.

Compensation | Consciousness | Deeds | Good | Deeds |

Peter Singer

Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are merely aesthetic. That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilizations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity.

Aesthetic | Appreciation | Beauty | Compensation | Feelings | Judgment | Little | Mystical | Sense | Appreciation | Beauty | Think | Value |

Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes

I regard the inflation acts as wrong in all ways. Personally I am one of the noble army of debtors, and can stand it if others can. But it is a wretched business.

Business | Compensation | Life | Life | Pleasure | Will | Business | Friends | Think |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

We have no choice, we people of the United States, as to whether or not we shall play a great part in the world. That has been determined to us by fate, by the march of events. We have to play that part. All that we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill.

Belief | Compensation | Control | Desire | Doubt | Enough | Important | Man |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.

Arrogance | Better | Compensation | Cunning | Education | Good | Greed | Industry | Injustice | Injustice | Labor | Life | Life | Man | Men | Need | Training | Work | Child |