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

Blaise Pascal

I lay it down as a fact that, if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. This appears from the quarrels to which indiscreet reports occasionally give rise.

Men | World | Friends |

Blaise Pascal

Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion. Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He does not wish any one to tell him the truth; he avoids telling it to others, and all these dispositions, so removed from justice and reason, have a natural root in his heart. I set it down as a fact that if all men know what each said to the other, there would not be four friends in the world.

Absence | Deceit | Disguise | Falsehood | Friend | Heart | Hypocrisy | Illusion | Justice | Life | Life | Man | Men | Passion | Reason | Regard | Sincerity | Society | Truth | World | Society | Friends |

Blaise Pascal

Imagination cannot makes fools wise; but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable.

Envy | Happy | Imagination | Reason | Wise | Friends |

Charles Caleb Colton

Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen as a pygmy.

Chance | Folly | Man | Opportunity | Will | Wisdom | Friends |

Charles Caleb Colton

The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world.

Calamity | Death | Disease | Good | Grave | Health | Malice | Misfortune | Nothing | Property | Reputation | Respect | Riches | World | Riches | Respect | Friends |

Cato the Elder, Marcus Porius Cato, aka Censorius (the Censor), Sapiens (the Wise), Priscus (the Ancient) NULL

Some men are more beholden to their bitterest enemies than to friends who appear to be sweetness itself. The former frequently tell the truth, but the latter never.

Men | Truth | Friends |

Charles Caleb Colton

He that openly tells his friends all that he thinks of them, must expect that they will secretly tell his enemies much that they do not think of him.

Will | Friends | Think |

Charles Caleb Colton

The reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortune, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude.

Adversity | Fortune | Gratitude | Little | Man | Men | Pity | Reason | Revenge | Friends |

Charles Caleb Colton

Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them.

Friends |

Charles Caleb Colton

The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral; and the only thing which we most want, happens to the be the only thing we never purchase - our coffin.

Office | Friends |

Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

The Master said... 'Have no friends not equal to yourself'....The Master said, 'The superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks of comfort'... The Master said, 'It is only the wisest and the very stupidest who cannot change.'... Being true to oneself is the law of God. To try to be true to oneself is the law of man.

Change | Comfort | God | Law | Man | Virtue | Virtue | Friends |

Charlotte Brontë

If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sake rather than our own.

Love | Friends |

Chinese Proverbs

Whenever you do a thing, act so that it will give your friends no occasion for regret and your foes no cause for joy.

Cause | Joy | Regret | Will | Friends |

Demetrius of Phalerum NULL

In prosperity friends do not leave you unless desired, whereas in adversity they stay away of their own accord.

Adversity | Prosperity | Friends |

Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

People | Friends |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

To be deceived by; our enemies or betrayed by our friends is insupportable; yet by ourselves are we often content to be so treated.

Friends |

Edward Everett Hale

The making of friends who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man's success in life.

Life | Life | Man | Success | Friends |