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

George Dawson

How majestic is naturalness. I have never met a man whom I really consider a great man who was not always natural and simple. Affection is inevitably the mark of one not sure of himself.

Character | Man |

Madame du Deffand, Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand

Let us strive to improve ourselves, for we cannot remain stationary: one either progresses or retrogrades.

Character |

Diogenes Laërtius, aka "Diogenes the Cynic"

We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less.

Character | Order |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the grief of one who falls from the serene activity into the absorbing soul wasting struggle.

Character | Grief | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Soul | Struggle | Thought | Thought | Understand |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Young love-making - that gossamer web!... The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.

Character | Life | Life | Love | Trust | Yearnings |

Antoinette Du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières

No one is ever satisfied with his fortune or dissatisfied with his understanding.

Character | Fortune | Understanding |

Helen Gahagan Douglas

Character isn’t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains.

Action | Anger | Character | Fear | Hate | Mind | Self | Thought | Thought |

Abba Eban, born Aubrey Solomon Meir Eban

The vital force in business life is the honest desire to serve. Business, it is said, is the science of service. He profits most who serves best. At the very bottom of the wish to render service must be honesty of purpose, and, as I go along through life, I see more and more that honesty in word, thought, and work means success. It spells a life worth living and in business clean success.

Business | Character | Desire | Force | Honesty | Life | Life | Means | Purpose | Purpose | Science | Service | Success | Thought | Work | Worth | Business |

Arthur Powell Davies

Life is not the creature of circumstance. Indeed, in the whole universe of everything that is, life alone, life by its very nature, is the antagonist of circumstance... If there is any one thing that is utterly clear about the nature of life, it is that it was meant to master circumstance. The spirit conquers all things when the spirit wills it, and no excuse remains when we fail to live as we wish.

Character | Life | Life | Nature | Spirit | Universe | Wills |

Madame Deluzy, Luzy Dorothee

There is but one book for genius - nature.

Character | Genius | Nature |

Edward Everett

Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity.

Blessings | Character | Conduct | Fame | Posterity | Public | Success | Virtue | Virtue |

Thomas D'Urfey

None are fools always, tho every one sometimes.

Character | Wisdom |

Orville Dewey

How many a knot of mystery and misunderstanding would be untied by one word spoken in simple and confiding truth of heart! How many a solitary place would be made glad if love were there, and how many a dark dwelling would be filled with light!

Character | Circumstances | Existence | Future | Life | Life | Love | Mystery | Teach | Truth |

Tyron Edwards

He is one of the noblest conquerors who carries on a successful warfare against his own appetites and passions, and has them under wise and full control.

Character | Control | Wise |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

At all times throughout the world tribes have supplanted other tribes; and as morality is one important element in their success, the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed men will thus rise and increase.

Character | Important | Men | Morality | Success | Will | World |

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new, sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone!

Character | Earth | Silence | Soul |

Henry Havelock Ellis

To be a leader of men one must turn one's back on men.

Character | Men | Leader |

Frederick Evan Crane

To make a man happy, fill his hands with work, his heart with affection, his mind with purpose, his memory with useful knowledge, his future with hope, and his stomach with food. The devil never enters a man except one of these rooms be vacant.

Character | Devil | Future | Happy | Heart | Hope | Knowledge | Man | Memory | Mind | Purpose | Purpose | Work |

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

The Indians were religious from the first moments of life. From the moment of the mother’s recognition that she had conceived to the end of the child’s second year of life, which was the ordinary duration of lactation, it was supposed by us that the mother’s spiritual influence was supremely important. Her attitude and secret meditations must be such to instill into the receptive soul of the unborn child the love of the Great Mystery and a sense of connectedness with all creation. Silence and isolation are the rule of life for the expectant mother... Silence, love, reverence - this is the trinity of first lessons, and to these she later adds generosity, courage and chastity.

Character | Chastity | Courage | Generosity | Important | Influence | Isolation | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Mystery | Reverence | Rule | Sense | Silence | Soul | Child |

Y. Eibeschuetz

A person’s soul has a spark of divinity. Forgetting one’s lofty identity, one might pick up major faults and bad habits. Therefore remember at all times that you are a child of the great King and it is not befitting to act in a lowly and degrading manner.

Character | Divinity | Soul | Child |