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

Nancy Gibbs

Of all ennobling sentiments, patriotism may be the most easily manipulated. On the one hand, it gives powerful expression to what is best in a nation’s character: a commitment to principle, a willingness to sacrifice, a devotion to the community by the choice of the individual. But among its toxic fruits are intolerance, belligerence and blind obedience, perhaps because it blooms most luxuriantly during times of war.

Character | Choice | Commitment | Devotion | Individual | Intolerance | Obedience | Patriotism | Sacrifice | War |

Robert Gordis

Pride is a deeply rooted ailment of the soul. The penalty is misery; the remedy lies in the sincere, life-long cultivation of humility, which means self-evaluation and a proper perspective toward past, present and future.

Character | Cultivation | Future | Humility | Life | Life | Means | Past | Present | Pride | Self | Soul |

Louise L. Hay

Forgiveness means giving up, letting go. It has nothing to do with condoning behavior. It's just letting the whole thing go. 'I forgive you for not being the way I want you to be. I forgive you and set you free.' (Affirmation sets you free.)

Behavior | Character | Forgiveness | Giving | Means | Nothing | Forgive |

Hayim Greenberg

Every man, no matter how great or small, must be viewed not as a means to an end, but as an end in himself.

Character | Man | Means |

Mary Eliza Haweis, aka Mrs. Hugh R. Haweis, maiden name Mary E. Joy

After all, what is vanity? If it means only a certain wish to look one’s best, is it not another name for self-respect? If it means inordinate self-admiration (very rare among persons with some occupation), it is less wicked than absurd.

Absurd | Admiration | Character | Means | Occupation | Respect | Self |

Samson Raphael Hirsch

Suffering is a great teacher. Suffering teaches you the limitations of your power; it reminds you of the frailty of your health, the instability of your possessions, and the inadequacy of your means which have only been lent to you and must be returned as soon as the Owner desires it. Suffering visits you and teaches you the nothingness of your false greatness. It teaches you modesty.

Character | Greatness | Health | Instability | Means | Modesty | Possessions | Power | Suffering |

Hans Hoffman

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Ability | Character | Means | Wisdom |

William James

We are ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

Cause | Character | Choice | Good | Man |

William James

When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.

Character | Choice | Wisdom |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worship, good works and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion’s chemical surrogates.

Character | Good | Means | Men | Reason | Religion | Worship |

William James

The ultimate test for us of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.

Character | Conduct | Means | Truth |

Thomas Jefferson

Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them.

Character | Means | Men |

David Hume

Custom is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared I the past. Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation.

Action | Character | Custom | Ends | Events | Experience | Future | Influence | Life | Life | Means | Memory | Past | Present | Speculation |

David Hume

It is universally allowed that nothing exists without a cause of its existence, and that chance, when strictly examined, is a mere negative word, and means not any real power which has anywhere a being in nature. But it is pretended that some causes are necessary, some not necessary.

Cause | Chance | Character | Existence | Means | Nature | Nothing | Power |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.

Character | Ends | Justify | Means | Nature | Reason |

Juan Ramón Jimenez, fully Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón

The greatest assassin of life is haste, the desire to reach things before the right time which means overreaching them.

Character | Desire | Haste | Life | Life | Means | Right | Time |

William James

There is an everlasting struggle in every mind between the tendency to keep unchanged, and the tendency to renovate, its ideas. Our education is a ceaseless compromise between the conservative and the progressive factors... Most of us grow more and more enslaved to the stock conceptions with which we have once become familiar, and less and less capable of assimilating impressions in any but the old ways... Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Character | Education | Genius | Ideas | Little | Means | Mind | Struggle | Truth | Old |