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

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Remember this, that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed I the performance of every act of life.

Character | Dignity | Life | Life |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

There is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life.

Character | Dignity | Life | Life |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

There is no state of mind, however simple, which does not change every moment.

Change | Character | Mind | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Repose without stagnation is the state most favorable to happiness. "The great felicity of life," says Seneca, "is to be without perturbations."

Character | Life | Life | Repose |

Stephan Bodian

Give up the notion that there is a final state to attain. Spiritual life consists of ongoing practice undertaken as a lifetime work. This realization breeds humility, especially when we realize that in our initial infatuation with enlightenment, we underestimate the amount of inner work necessary to free us from our addictive patterns of thought and behavior.

Behavior | Character | Enlightenment | Humility | Life | Life | Practice | Thought | Work | Thought |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

The trouble of the many and various aims of mortal men bring them much care, and herein they go forward by different paths but strive to reach one end, which is happiness. And that good is that, to which if any man attain, he can desire nothing further... Happiness is a state which is made perfect by the union of all good things. This end all men seek to reach, as I said, though by different paths. For there is implanted by nature in the minds of men a desire for the true good; but error leads them astray towards false goods by wrong paths.

Aims | Care | Character | Desire | Error | Good | Man | Men | Mortal | Nature | Nothing | Wrong | Trouble | Happiness |

William Blake

If a fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

Character | Folly | Wise |

Susan Fenimore Cooper, fully Susan Augusta Fenimore Cooper

A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the results of sudden impulses and accidents than of that reason of which we so much boast.

Character | Events | History | Reason | Wisdom |

James Fenimore Cooper

A true history of human events would show a far larger proportion of our acts are the results of sudden impulses and accident, than of that reason of which we so much boast.

Accident | Character | Events | History | Reason |

William Congreve

Uncertainty and expectation are the joyous of life. Security is an insipid thing, and the overtaking and possessing or a wish discovers the folly of the chase.

Character | Expectation | Folly | Life | Life | Security | Uncertainty | Wisdom | Expectation |

Jeremy Collier

Prudence is the necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they degenerate into folly and excess.

Character | Excess | Folly | Prudence | Prudence |

George Crabbe

How often do we sigh for opportunities of doing good, whist we neglect the openings of Providence in little things, which would frequently lead to the accomplishment of most important usefulness!... Good is done by degrees. However small in proportion the benefits which follow individual attempts to do good, a great deal may thus be accomplished by perseverance, even in the midst of discouragements and disappointments.

Accomplishment | Character | Good | Important | Individual | Little | Neglect | Perseverance | Providence | Usefulness |

Albert Einstein

If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.

Character | Fear | Insecurity | Men | Pain | Surrender |

J. L. M. Curry, fully Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry

A state to prosper, must be built on foundations of moral character, and, this character is the principal element of its strength, and the only guaranty of its permanence and prosperity.

Character | Prosperity | Strength |

Henry Fielding

One situation only of the married state is excluded from pleasure: and that is, a state of indifference.

Character | Indifference | Pleasure |

David Grayson, pseudonym of Ray Stannard Baker

All times are great exactly in proportion as men feel, profoundly, their indebtedness to something or other... A feeling of immeasurable obligation puts life into a man and fight into him, and joy into him.

Character | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Men | Obligation |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.

Chance | Character | Folly | Good | Life | Life | Nothing | Rights | Sense | Wisdom |