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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.

Dignity | Man |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinction. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity; they must walk gingerly, according tot he laws of ice, or down they must go, dignity and all.

Beauty | Character | Dignity | Distinction | Force | Good | Learning | Wit | Beauty |

Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

He who values his own dignity will hold the world in little esteem.

Dignity | Esteem | Little | Will | World |

William Rounseville Alger

Reserve may be pride fortified in ice; dignity is worth reposing on truth.

Dignity | Pride | Reserve | Truth | Worth |

Booker T. Washington, fully Booker Taliaferro Washington

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

Dignity | Race | Writing |

Edward Bellamy

The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual

Democracy | Dignity | Worth |

Enrico Fermi

Such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide. It is clear that the use of such a weapon cannot be justified on any ethical ground which gives a human being a certain individuality and dignity even if he happens to be a resident of an enemy country... The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.

Danger | Dignity | Enemy | Evil | Existence | Humanity | Individuality | Knowledge | Nature | Danger |

William George Jordan

Life is simply time given to man to learn how to live. Mistakes are always part of learning. The real dignity of life consists in cultivating a fine attitude towards our own mistakes and those of others. It is the fine tolerance of a fine soul. Man becomes great, not through never making mistakes, but by profiting by those he does make; by being satisfied with a single rendition of a mistake, not encoring it into a continuous performance; by getting from it the honey of new, regenerating inspiration with no irritating sting of morbid regret; by building better to-day because of his poor yesterday; and by rising with renewed strength, finer purpose and freshened courage every time he falls.

Better | Courage | Dignity | Inspiration | Life | Life | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Time | Learn |

Frank Edward Peretti

A truth our socetiy must not lose sight of and that is the sanctity of every human life and the dignity of every individual.

Dignity | Life | Life | Truth |

Hortense McQuarrie Odlum

If a person goes to his job with a firm determination to give of himself the best of which he is capable, that job no matter what it is takes on dignity and importance.

Determination | Dignity |

Immanual Hermann Fichte

Humanity may endure the loss of everything; all its possessions may be turned away without infringing its true dignity - all but the possibility of improvement.

Dignity | Possessions | Loss |

Howard Mumford Jones

If the equality of individuals and the dignity of man be myths, they are myths to which the republic is committed

Dignity | Equality | Man |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

Dignity | Husband | Individual | Afraid | Leader |

James A. Michener, fully James Albert Michener

If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.

Dignity | Man |

Jane Addams

We slowly learn that life consists of processes as well as results, and that failure may come quite as easily from ignoring the adequacy of one's method as from selfish or ignoble aims. We are thus brought to a conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all [people], nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all [people], but as that which affords a rule for living as well as a test of faith.

Creed | Democracy | Dignity | Equality | Failure | Life | Life | Method | Rule | Sentiment | Failure | Learn |

Jeremy Collier

What can be more honorable than to have courage enough to execute the commands of reason and conscience,--to maintain the dignity of our nature, and the station assigned us?

Courage | Dignity | Enough | Reason |

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Humanity may endure the loss of everything; all its possessions may be turned away without infringing its true dignity - all but the possibility of improvement.

Dignity | Possessions | Loss |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme.

Dignity | Intuition |