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

Robert Briffault, fully Robert Stephen Briffault

The full-grown modern human being who seeks but refuge finds instead boredom and mental dissolution, unless he can be, even in his withdrawal, creative. He can find the quality of happiness in the strain and travail only of achievement and growth. And he is conscious of touching the highest pinnacle of fulfillment which his life-urges demand when his is consumed in the service of an idea, in the conquest of the goal pursued.

Achievement | Character | Conquest | Fulfillment | Growth | Life | Life | Service | Happiness |

Murray Bookchin

Freedom often means little more than the effective coordination of humanity in the achievement of economic ends.

Achievement | Character | Ends | Freedom | Humanity | Little | Means |

Ralph Tyler Flewelling

We live in an age to which self-restraint is hateful. Our emphasis is placed on achievement. Restraint without achievement is nothing, but achievement without restraint is worse.

Achievement | Age | Character | Nothing | Restraint | Self |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting.

Achievement | Character | Waiting |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

Consumption, celebrity and the quest for perfection in this world are all subject to the law of diminishing returns: each successive acquisition and achievement will mean less than the one before. Diminishing returns are finally leading to diminished expectations about the promise of finding happiness without caring for our souls. Perhaps we are now ready to reject the hucksters of materialisms that have lured us down so many dead ends, and start again on the road that will lead us back to God.

Achievement | Character | Ends | God | Law | Perfection | Promise | Will | World | Happiness |

Austin Phelps

Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost possible achievement - these are the martial virtues which must command success.

Achievement | Character | Daring | Force | Opportunity | Persistence | Success | Tact | Vigilance |

Winfred Rhoades, fully Winfred Chesney Rhoades

Life's greatest achievement is the continual re-making of yourself so that at last you know how to live.

Achievement | Character | Life | Life |

Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson

The humorous man recognizes that absolute purity, absolute justice, absolute logic and perfection are beyond human achievement and that men have been able to live happily for thousands of years in a state of genial frailty.

Absolute | Achievement | Justice | Logic | Man | Men | Perfection | Purity | Wisdom |

George Matthew Adams

We can accomplish almost anything within our ability if we but think we can! Every great achievement in this world was first carefully thought out... Think - but to a purpose. Think constructively. Think as you read. Think as you listen. Think as you travel and eyes reveal new situations. Think as you work daily at your place in life. There can be no advancement or success without serious thought.

Ability | Achievement | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Success | Thought | Wisdom | Work | World | Think | Thought |

Srully Blotnick

What looks like a loss may be the very event which is subsequently responsible for helping to produce the major achievement of your life.

Achievement | Life | Life | Looks | Wisdom | Loss |

Eric Butterworth

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It is a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

Accomplishment | Achievement | Man | Nothing | Wisdom | Obstacle |

Mary Baker Eddy

The devotion of thought to an honest achievement makes the achievement possible.

Achievement | Devotion | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Joseph Farrell, fully Joseph Patrick Farrell

Take it for granted that the greater your achievement the more genuine will be the surprise of your friends and neighbors.

Achievement | Will | Wisdom | Friends |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It has always seemed to me that ruthlessness and arrogant self-confidence constitute the indispensable condition for what, when it succeeds, strike us as greatness. And I also believe that one ought to differentiate between greatness of achievement and greatest of personality.

Achievement | Confidence | Greatness | Indispensable | Personality | Ruthlessness | Self | Self-confidence | Wisdom |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development as supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization.

Achievement | Belief | Civilization | Existence | Faith | Illusion | Instinct | Perfection | Present | Wisdom | Work |