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

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

The mean of true valor lies between the extremes of cowardice and rashness.

Character | Cowardice | Rashness | Valor | Valor |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Valor has its limits like the other virtues, and these limits once transgressed, we find ourselves on the path of vice; so that we may pass through valor to temerity, obstinacy, and madness, unless we know its limits well - and they are truly hard to discern near the borderlines.

Character | Madness | Valor | Valor |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The worth and value of a man is in his heart and his will; there lies his real honor. Valor is the strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul.

Character | Heart | Honor | Man | Soul | Strength | Valor | Valor | Will | Worth | Value |

Edward Thomson

True valor lies in the mind, the never-yielding purpose, nor owns the blind award of giddy fortune.

Character | Fortune | Mind | Purpose | Purpose | Valor | Valor | Yielding |

Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

The envious man is in pain upon all occasions which ought to give him pleasure. The relish of his life is inverted; and the objects which administer the highest satisfaction to those who are exempt from this passion give the quickest pangs to persons who are subject to it. All the perfections of their fellow creatures are odious. Youth, beauty, valor and wisdom are provocations of their displeasure. What a wretched and apostate state is this! to be offended with excellence, and to hate a man because we approve him!

Beauty | Character | Excellence | Hate | Life | Life | Man | Pain | Passion | Pleasure | Valor | Valor | Wisdom | Youth |

Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL

Four things support the world: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor of the brave.

Good | Justice | Learning | Valor | Valor | Wise | World |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

What we take for virtues is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry know how to arrange; and it is not always from valor and from chastity that men are valiant, an that women are chaste.

Chastity | Fortune | Industry | Men | Nothing | Valor | Valor |

John Dryden

How strangely high endeavors may be blessed, where piety and valor jointly go.

Piety | Valor | Valor |

Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

Distressed valor challenges great respect, even from enemies.

Respect | Valor | Valor |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every evil to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the Sandwich islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptations we resist.

Enemy | Evil | Strength | Valor | Valor |

William Shakespeare

The better part of valor is discretion.

Better | Discretion | Valor | Valor |

Beaumont and Fletcher, Francis Beaumont (c.1585-1614) and John Fletcher

Discretion and hardy valor are the twins of honor, and, nursed together, make a conqueror; divided, but a talker.

Discretion | Honor | Valor | Valor |

Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek

True valor is like honesty; it enters into all that a man sees and does.

Man | Valor | Valor |

Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim

There is no greater valor nor no sterner fight. He who would be what he ought to be must stop being what he is.

Valor | Valor |

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

True valor lies half way between cowardice and rashness.

Cowardice | Valor | Valor |