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

Maurice Nicoll

It is in life that we have to ‘perfect’ ourselves. If we limit ‘this life’ to one single journey between birth and death there is not enough time. People give up trying, just because of this appearance of things. They do not bend the life round in a circle, but leave the whole matter to the ‘hereafter’. We cannot grasp that beyond the ‘end’ lies the beginning... Beyond our life we meet - our life. We cannot turn in any other direction!

Appearance | Beginning | Birth | Character | Death | Enough | Journey | Life | Life | People | Time |

Guiseppe Mazzini

Great revolutions are the work rather of principles than of bayonets, and are achieved first in the moral, and afterwards in the material sphere.

Character | Principles | Wisdom | Work |

Wilson Mizner

The worst-tempered people I've ever met were people who knew they were wrong.

Character | People | Wrong |

Paul Moody, fully Paul Dwight Moody

The measure of a man is not the number of his servants but in the number of people whom he serves.

Character | Man | People |

Yaakov Neiman

Some people ask why the righteous suffer in this world. To a great extent the question is based on a misconception. Often, the criteria people use to judge whether another person is living a good life or not is by his financial standard of living... A truly righteous person by definition lives a happy life. Such a person has internalized the awareness that all the occurrences in his life are for the good, and he has satisfaction from his life. His life has meaning and purpose. His whole being is focused on spiritual elevation. He deeply feels that the good life is to fulfill the will of the Almighty and hence he feels great pleasure in the good deeds that he performs.

Awareness | Character | Deeds | Good | Happy | Life | Life | Meaning | People | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Will | World | Deeds | Awareness |

Gabriel Sénac de Meilhan

There is no such thing as absolute truth... People are less deceived by failing to see the truth than by failing to see its limits.

Absolute | Character | People | Truth |

George E. Mathieu

A man may lose his strength; he may lose his money; he may lose every earthly thing which he possesses. Yet he may still attain and control his happiness if it stems from service to others.

Character | Control | Man | Money | Service | Strength | Happiness |

Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

The most effective way of attacking vice is to expose it to public ridicule. People can put up with rebukes but they cannot bear being laughed at: they are prepared to be wicked but they dislike appearing ridiculous.

Character | People | Public | Ridicule | Vice |

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

What is then liberty? To be born is at once to be born in the world and to the world. The world is already constituted, but never completely. Under the first rapport, we are solicited, under the second we are open to an infinity of possibilities. But this analysis is still abstract, because we exist under these two relations at once. There is therefore never determinism and never absolute choice; I am never a thing and never naked consciousness.

Absolute | Abstract | Character | Choice | Consciousness | Liberty | Wisdom | World |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Love hates people to be attached to each other except by himself, and takes a laggard part in relations that are set up and maintained under another title, as marriage is. Connections and means have, with reason, as much weight in it as graces and beauty, or more. We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry must as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us. Therefore I like this fashion of arranging it rather by a third hand than by our own, and by the sense of other rather than by our own. How opposite is all this to the conventions of love!

Beauty | Character | Family | Love | Marriage | Means | People | Posterity | Practice | Race | Reason | Sense | Title |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge. We try all the ways that can lead us to it. When reason fails us, we use experience.. which is a weaker and less dignified means. But truth is so great a thing that we must not disdain any medium that will lead us to it.

Character | Desire | Disdain | Experience | Knowledge | Means | Reason | Truth | Will |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

We can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless.

Character | Esteem | Evil | Malice | Pity | Stupidity | Unhappiness | Think |

Mordechai of Lekhivitz NULL

Repentance should be with joy. If repentance is sincere, the person will be joyful even though he is humble. If repentance is insincere, the person will be depressed and irritable and will react with anger toward people who speak with him.

Anger | Character | Joy | People | Repentance | Will |

Thomas Merton

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.

Character | Think |

Michael Murphy

Love transcends normal needs and motives, revealing a unity among people and things more fundamental than any differences between them. It is its own reward.

Character | Love | Motives | People | Reward | Unity |