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

Adolfo Barcella

Unrequited love is the meaning of life. We’re here to love but not to be loved, to give but not receive. Our mission in this world is to improve humanity and leave a better history than we found. Only selfless love has such power. Only love without interest or expectation of reward can change human beings... To give love without receiving love is the truest love and brings the greatest happiness there is in life.

Better | Change | Character | Expectation | History | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mission | Power | Receive | Reward | World | Expectation | Happiness |

Francis Atterbury

Few consider how much we are indebted to government, because few can represent how wretched mankind would be without it.

Character | Government | Mankind |

Simeon ben Azai, sometimes Ben Azai

The reward of doing one duty is the power to do another.

Character | Duty | Power | Reward |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Pure motives do not insure perfect results.

Character | Motives |

Jean de La Bruyère

The greatest part of mankind employ their first years to make their last miserable.

Character | Mankind |

Jean de La Bruyère

We meet with few utterly dull and stupid souls: the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes: the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, and the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth.

Character | Mankind |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

Some there are who are clear-sighted and do not need my teachings, and some whose eyes are clouded with dust who will not heed it though given, but between these two there are also some with but little dust in their eyes, who can be helped to see; and for the sake of these I will go back among mankind and teach.

Character | Little | Mankind | Need | Teach | Will |

Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

Agriculture is the noblest of all alchemy; for it turns earth, and even manure, into gold, conferring upon its cultivator the additional reward of health.

Alchemy | Character | Earth | Gold | Health | Reward |

Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.

Character | Honor | Reward |

William Ellery Channing

In general, we do well to let an opponent’s motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail.

Character | Motives |

Edgar Fawcett

The best reward of a kindly deed is the knowledge of having done it.

Character | Knowledge | Reward |

Charles W. Eliot

Don't think too much about yourselves. Try to cultivate the habit of thinking of others; this will reward you. Nourish your minds by good reading, constant reading. Discover what your lifework is, work in which you can do most good, in which you can be happiest. Be unafraid in all things when you know you are in the right.

Character | Good | Habit | Reading | Reward | Right | Thinking | Will | Work | Think |

William Cowper

No wild enthusiast ever yet could rest, till half mankind were like himself possess’d.

Character | Mankind | Rest |

Albert Einstein

Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.

Character | Enemy | Force | Individual | Mankind | Opportunity | Power | Society | Terror | Society |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

Character | Duty | Power | Reward |

Henry Fielding

Perhaps the summary of good-breeding may be reduced to this rule. “Behave unto all men as you would they should behave to you.” This will most certainly oblige us to treat all mankind with the utmost civility and respect, there being nothing that we desire more than to be treated so by them.

Character | Civility | Desire | Good | Mankind | Men | Nothing | Respect | Rule | Will |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Forget not that the man who cannot enjoy his own natural gifts is silence, and find his reward in the; exercise of them, will generally find himself badly off.

Character | Man | Reward | Silence | Will | Wisdom |