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

Richard Baxter

Idleness is the hot-bed of temptation, the cradle of disease, the waster of time, the canker-worm of felicity. To him that has no employment, life in a little while will have no novelty; and when novelty is laid in the grave, the funeral of comfort will soon follow.

Character | Comfort | Disease | Grave | Idleness | Life | Life | Little | Novelty | Temptation | Time | Will | Novelty |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.

Character | Man | Men | Opinion | Rest | Value |

Arthur Aughey

The chief secret of comfort lies in not suffering trifles to vex us, and in prudently cultivating an undergrowth of small pleasures, since very few great ones are let on long leases.

Character | Comfort | Suffering | Trifles |

Walter Bagehot

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

Character | Influence | Men | Obedience | Opinion | Public | Wisdom | Words | Think |

William Blake

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.

Character | Man | Mind | Opinion |

Heywood Broun, fully Matthew Heywood Campbell Broun

Nobody expects to find comfort and companionability in reformers.

Character | Comfort | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

The world is governed much more by opinion than by laws. It is not the judgment of courts, but the moral judgment of individuals and masses of men, which is the chief wall of defence around property and life. With the progress of society, this power of opinion is taking the place of arms.

Character | Judgment | Life | Life | Men | Opinion | Power | Progress | Property | Society | World |

Euripedes NULL

No man on earth is truly free. All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform.

Character | Conscience | Earth | Fear | Man | Money | Necessity | Opinion | Public |

Tyron Edwards

Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, "I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction."

Affliction | Character | Comfort | Consolation | God | Man | Quiet | Sorrow | Sympathy | Wise | God |

William Grossman

I know it sounds strange, but it is true. In the difficult deaths dying patients grasp onto your hand - as if by sheer grip they could hold on to life. I try to tell them whatever I can, to comfort them and say it will be all right. But in the easy deaths it’s the other way around - the dying man or woman will reach out and take your hand. They are trying to comfort you.

Character | Comfort | Life | Life | Man | Right | Will | Woman |

Robert Hall

Worldly ambition is founded on pride or envy, but emulation, or laudable ambition, is actually founded in humility; for it evidently implies that we have a low opinion of our present attainments, and think it necessary to be advanced.

Ambition | Character | Envy | Humility | Opinion | Present | Pride | Ambition | Think |

Sarah Grand, pseudonymn of Frances Elizabeth Bellenden Clarke McFall

Our opinion of people depends less upon what we see in them than in what they make us see in ourselves.

Character | Opinion | People |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

To reach the depths of the beauty of our souls in our close relationships, we must be prepared to walk into the dark side of intimacy and out the other side into the light. Our most meaningful relationships are based on what we are capable of becoming, rather than on what we have been or what we are, on our longing for expansion rather than our preoccupation with comfort and security.

Beauty | Character | Comfort | Light | Longing | Security | Beauty |

William Jay

One of the most useless of all things is to take a deal of trouble in providing against dangers that never come. How many toil to lay up riches which they never enjoy; to provide for exigencies that never happen; to prevent troubles that never come; sacrificing present comfort and enjoyment in guarding against the wants of a period they may never live to see.

Character | Comfort | Enjoyment | Present | Riches | Troubles | Wants | Riches | Trouble |

Robert H. Jackson, fully Robert Houghwout Jackson

A person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man's comfort and inspiration is another's jest and scorn.

Character | Comfort | Inspiration | Man | Meaning |