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

Louis-Aimé Martin

If you would know the political and moral condition of a people, ask as to the position of its women.

Character | People | Position |

Pierre Cornielle

In a noble soul, merit alone should light the flame of love.

Character | Light | Love | Merit | Soul | Wisdom |

Charles de Saint-Évremond, fully Charles Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Évremond

Reputation is rarely proportioned to virtue. We have seen a thousand people esteemed, either for the merit they had not yet attained or for that they no longer possessed.

Character | Merit | People | Reputation | Virtue | Virtue |

Tyron Edwards

Whatever our place, allotted to us by Providence, that for us is the post of honor and duty. God estimates us not by the position we are in, but by the way in which we fill it.

Character | Duty | God | Honor | Position | Providence | God |

Henry Fielding

Though we may sometimes unintentionally bestow our beneficence on the unworthy, it does not take from the merit of the act. For charity doth not adopt the vices of its objects.

Character | Charity | Merit |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Confronted by outstanding merit in another, there is no way of saving one's ego except by love.

Character | Ego | Love | Merit |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Our best hope for the future is that the intellect - the scientific spirit, reason - should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind. The very nature of reason is a guarantee that it would not fail to concede to human emotions, and to all that is determined by them, the position to which they are entitled. But the common pressure exercised by such a domination of reason would prove to be the strongest unifying force among men, and would prepare the way for further unifications. Whatever, like the ban laid upon thought by religion, opposes such a development is a danger for the future of mankind.

Character | Danger | Emotions | Force | Future | Guarantee | Hope | Mankind | Men | Mind | Nature | Position | Reason | Religion | Spirit | Thought | Time | Danger | Intellect | Thought |

Aaron Hill

There is no merit where there is no trial; and, till experience stamps the mark of strength, cowards may pass for heroes, faith for falsehood.

Character | Experience | Faith | Falsehood | Merit | Strength |

Harry Graham, Fully Jocelyn Henry Clive 'Harry' Graham

Though the noblest disposition you inherit, And your character with piety is pack'd, All such qualities have very little merit unaccompanied by Tact.

Character | Little | Merit | Piety | Qualities | Tact |

Claude-Adrien Helvétius

To be loved, we should merit but little esteem; all superiority attracts awe and aversion.

Awe | Character | Esteem | Little | Merit | Superiority |

William James

A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.

Character | Man | Position | Responsibility | Will |

William James

Our belief in truth itself.. that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other, what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives.

Belief | Better | Character | Desire | Position | System | Thinking | Truth |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

In the hour of death the only adequate consolation is that one has not evaded life, but has endured it. What a man shall accomplish or not accomplish, does not lie in his power to decide; he is not the One who will guide the world; he has only to obey... The point consists precisely in loving his neighbor, or, what is essentially the same thing, in living equally for every man. Every other point of view is a contentious one, however advantageous and comfortable and apparently significant this position may be... yet in the hour of death, he will confidently dare say to his soul: “I have done my best; whether I have accomplished anything, I do not know; whether I have helped anyone, I do not know; but that I have lived for them, that I do know, and I know it from the fact that they insulted me. And this is my consolation, that I shall not have to take the secret with me to the grave, that I, in order to have good and undisturbed and comfortable days in life, have denied my kinship to other men, kinship with the poor, in order to live in aristocratic seclusion, or with the distinguished, in order to live in secret obscurity.

Character | Consolation | Death | Good | Grave | Life | Life | Man | Men | Obscurity | Obscurity | Order | Position | Power | Seclusion | Soul | Will | World |

Alexander Pope

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Character | Merit | Soul | Wisdom |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When a law is proposed in the people’s assembly, what is asked of them is not precisely whether they approve of the proposition or reject it, but whether it is in conforming with the general will which is theirs; each by giving his vote gives his opinion on this question, and the counting of votes yields a declaration of the general will. When, therefore, the opinion contrary to my own prevails, this proves only that I have made a mistake, and that what I believed to be the general will was not so. If my particular opinion had prevailed against the general will, I should have done something other than what I had willed, and then I should not have been free. This presupposes, it is true, that all characteristics of the general will are still to be found in the majority; when these cease to be there, no matter what position men adopt, there is no longer any freedom.

Character | Freedom | Giving | Law | Majority | Men | Mistake | Opinion | People | Position | Question | Will |

William Morley Punshon

There are difficulties in your path. Be thankful for them. They will test your capabilities of resistance; you will be impelled to persevere from the very energy of the opposition. But what of him that fails? What does he gain? Strength for life. The real merit is not in the success but in the endeavor; and win or lose, he will be honored and crowned.

Character | Energy | Life | Life | Merit | Opposition | Strength | Success | Will |

Samuel Smiles

The crown and glory of life is character. It is the noblest possession of a man, constituting a rank in itself, and estate in the general good will; dignifying every station, and exacting every position in society. It exercises a greater power than wealth and secures all the honor without the jealousies of fame. It carries with it an influence which always tells; for it is the result of proved honor, rectitude and consistency - qualities which, perhaps more than any others, command the general confidence and respect of mankind.

Character | Confidence | Consistency | Fame | Glory | Good | Honor | Influence | Life | Life | Man | Mankind | Position | Power | Qualities | Rank | Respect | Society | Wealth | Will | Respect |