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

Samuel Richardson

A man may keep a woman, but not his estate.

Better | Mother | Wife |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

A man's heterosexuality will not put up with any homosexuality, and vice versa.

Confidence | Life | Life | Man | Mother | Success |

Sydney J. Harris

The deepest and rarest kind of courage has nothing to do with feats or obstacles in the outside world; and, indeed, has nothing to do with the outside world — it is the courage to be who you are.

Absurd | Children | Fallacy | Mother |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The tendency of aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture.

Father | Mother | Regard | Wishes | Obstacle |

Simone Weil

Men ... ask nothing better, it would seem, than to leave their destiny, their life, and all their thoughts in the hands of a few men with a gift for the exclusive manipulation of this or that technique.

Chance | Father | Meditation | Mother |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.

Church | Doubt | Heart | Mission | Mother | Pardon | Will |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

Imagination | Mother |

Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

[A doctor] preserves, if it already exists, the health and good habit of the flesh, or if absent, recalls it… But the scope of our art is to provide the soul with wings, to rescue it from the world and give it to God.

Envy | Glory | God | Heaven | Mother | Reason | Soul | Will | God | Afraid | Understand |

Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

And therefore, first in the holy Synod of Nicaea, the gathering of the three hundred and eighteen chosen men, united by the Holy Ghost, as far as in him lay, he [St. Athanasius] stayed the disease. Though not yet ranked among the Bishops, he held the first rank among the members of the Council, for preference was given to virtue just as much as to office

Darkness | Father | Light | Mother | Nature | People | Spirit | Truth | World | Old |

Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL

But on whom shall our poor heart lavish its love? Who shall be found that is great enough to be the recipient of its treasures? Will a human being know how to comprehend them, and above all will he be able to repay? There exists but one Being capable of comprehending love; it is Jesus; He alone can give us back infinitely more than we shall ever give to him.

God | Good | Mother | Words | God |

John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

Pride is utter poverty of soul disguised as riches, imaginary light where in fact there is darkness.

Action | Anger | Daughter | Enlightenment | Evidence | Future | Hope | Judgment | Lord | Man | Mother | Prayer | Sorrow | Wealth | Work |

John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

A person is at the beginning of a prayer when he succeeds in removing distractions which at the beginning beset him. He is at the middle of the prayer when the mind concentrates only on what he is meditating and contemplating. He reaches the end when, with the Lord, the prayer enraptures him.

Ability | Blessings | God | Good | Little | Man | Men | Mother | Pride | Purpose | Purpose | Receive | Skill | Will | Work | God |

Stephen Sondheim, fully Stephen Joshua Sondheim

My personal life and my artistic life do not interfere with each other.

Ambition | Mother | Ambition |

Theodore Parker

As society advances the standard of poverty rises.

History | Mother | Treason | Infidelity |

Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser

The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions — none more so than the most capable.

Children | Compassion | Daughter | Father | Giving | Hope | Judgment | Love | Mother | Pride | Strength | Wants |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

As regards to its use on the coinage we have actual experience by which to go. In all my life I have never heard any human being speak reverently of this motto on the coins or show any sign of having appealed to any high emotion in him. But I have literally hundreds of times heard it used as an occasion of, and incitement to, the sneering ridicule which it is above all things undesirable that so beautiful and exalted a phrase should excite. For example, throughout the long contest, extending over several decades, on the free [silver] coinage question, the existence of this motto on the coins was a constant source of jest and ridicule; and this was unavoidable. Everyone must remember the innumerable cartoons and articles based on phrases like 'In God we trust for the other eight cents'; 'In God we trust for the short weight'; 'In god we trust for the thirty-seven cents we do not pay'; and so forth and so forth. Surely I am well within bounds when I say that a use of the phrase which invites constant levity of this type is most undesirable.

Crime | Fate | Individual | Men | Mother | Pardon | Will | Fate | Trouble | Friends | Victim |

Theodore Parker

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive nature away from the heart of man.

History | Mother | Treason | Infidelity |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Children | Darkness | Future | Good | Honor | Mother | Wise |

Theodore Parker

If you lend me your ears, I shall doubtless take your hearts too. That I may not lead you into any wrong, let me warn you of this. Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect. Be true to your own mind and conscience, your heart and your soul. So only can you be true to God.

Asceticism | Mother | Passion | Sensuality | Asceticism | Child |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

The worst of all fears is the fear of living.

Children | Duty | Father | Life | Life | Man | Mother | Right | Selfishness | Will | Woman | Work | Worth |