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

Thomas Hobbes

Continual success in obtaining those things which a man form time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call felicity; I mean the felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Character | Desire | Fear | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mind | Sense | Success | Time | Tranquility |

Ernest Shurtleff Holmes

Why do we look old? Because we remember the weight of the burden of last year's experiences. There is no other reason. Instead of lifting our faces, we should discover that the thing to lift is our thought. It is the mind, not the physical body, which has the stamp of age and reflects it in the body.

Age | Body | Character | Mind | Reason | Thought |

Charles Montagu Halifax, 1st Earl of Halifax, Lord Halifax

The memory and conscience never did, nor never will, agree about forgiving injuries.

Character | Conscience | Memory | Will |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

No public man can be a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man's-land between honesty and dishonesty.

Character | Dishonesty | Honesty | Land | Little | Man | Public |

Thomas Hardy

Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.

Character |

Louise L. Hay

Forgiveness means giving up, letting go. It has nothing to do with condoning behavior. It's just letting the whole thing go. 'I forgive you for not being the way I want you to be. I forgive you and set you free.' (Affirmation sets you free.)

Behavior | Character | Forgiveness | Giving | Means | Nothing | Forgive |

William Harvey

There is no perfect knowledge which can be entitled ours, that is innate; none but what has been obtained from experience, or derived in some way from our senses; all knowledge, at all events, is examined by these, approved by them, and finally presents itself to us firmly grounded upon some preexisting knowledge which we possessed: because without memory there is no experience, which is nothing else than reiterated memory; in like manner memory cannot exist without endurance of the things perceived, and the thing perceived cannot remain where it has never been.

Character | Endurance | Events | Experience | Knowledge | Memory | Nothing |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Conceit is just as natural a thing to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded people’s thoughts move in such small circles that five minute’s’ conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An arc in the movement of a large intellect does not differ sensibly from a straight line.

Character | Conversation | Enough | Little | People | Intellect |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

A nation is a thing that lives and acts like a man, and men are the particles of which it is composed.

Character | Man | Men |

Edwin Paxton Hood

Be as careful of the books you read as the company you keep. Your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.

Books | Character | Will |

Stephen Grellet, born Étienne de Grellet du Mabillier

I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Character | Good | Kindness | Neglect | World |

Thomas Hobbes

To this war of every man, against every man, this is also consequent that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice, and injustice, are none of the faculties neither of the body, nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his sense, and passions. They are qualities, that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thing distinct; but only that to be every man’s, that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it.

Body | Character | Force | Fraud | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Law | Man | Men | Mind | Nothing | Power | Qualities | Right | Sense | Society | Solitude | War | World | Wrong |

Ellen Goodman

It is one thing when business is interested in young people as students. Quite another when they are interested in students as consumers. It is one thing when the marketplace supports the schools. Quite another when the schools become a marketplace.

Business | Character | People | Business |

Thomas Hobbes

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Character | Desire | Fear | Life | Life | Mind | Sense | Tranquility |

Hans Hoffman

A thing in itself never expresses anything. It is the relation between things that gives meaning to them and that formulates a thought. A thought functions only as a fragmentary part in the formulation of an idea.

Character | Meaning | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

There is no royal road to anything. One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.

Character | Time |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.

Character | World |

Thomas Haliburton, fully Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pseudonym "Sam Slick"

The memory of past favors, is like a rainbow, bright, vivid, and beautiful, but it soon fades away. The memory of injuries is engraved on the heart, and remains forever.

Character | Heart | Memory | Past |

David Hume

‘Tis one thing to know virtue, and another to conform the will to it.

Character | Virtue | Virtue | Will |