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

Ray Lyman Wilbur

Unless we think of others and do something for them, we miss one of the greatest sources of happiness.

Character | Wisdom | Think |

Morris Adler

There are those who are fearful to be alone with themselves. They run with the crowd not out of love for others but out of fear to remain alone with themselves, terrified lest they hear the voice of their own spirit, or fearful of remaining alone with their own void.

Fear | Love | Spirit | Wisdom |

Alexander Ziskind Maimon

When a person who has some personal suffering sees others empathize with him, he feels a degree of relief.

Character | Suffering |

Arthur Warwick

It is not good to speak of evil of all whom we know bad; it is worse to judge evil of any who may prove good. To speak ill upon knowledge shows a want of charity; to speak ill upon suspicion shows a want of honesty. I will not speak so bad as I know of many; I will not speak worse than I know of any. To know evil of others and not speak it, is sometimes discretion; to speak evils of others and not know it, is always dishonesty. He may be evil himself who speaks good of others upon knowledge, but he can never be good himself who speaks evil of others upon suspicion.

Character | Charity | Discretion | Dishonesty | Evil | Good | Honesty | Knowledge | Suspicion | Will |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

I give nothing as duties. What others give as duties I give as living impulses (shall I give the heart’s action as a duty?)

Action | Character | Duty | Heart | Nothing |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it; and of that which is coming into existence part is already extinguished. Motions and changes are continually renewing the world, just as the uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the infinite duration of ages. In this flowing stream, then on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things which hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows, which fly by, but it has already passed out of sight.

Existence | Hurry | Love | Man | Price | Time | Wisdom | World |

Thomas Wolfe, fully Thomas Clayton Wolfe

This is man: a writer of books, a putter-down of words, a painter of pictures, a maker of ten thousand philosophies. He grows passionate over ideas, he hurls scorn and mockery at another's work, he finds the one way, the true way, for himself, and calls all others false--yet in the billion books upon the shelves there is not one that can tell him how to draw a single fleeting breath in peace and comfort. He makes histories of the universe, he directs the destiny of the nations, but he does not know his own history, and he cannot direct his own destiny with dignity or wisdom for ten consecutive minutes.

Books | Character | Comfort | Destiny | Dignity | Ideas | Man | Mockery | Peace | Wisdom | Words | Work |

Akon NULL

Mankind is a creature of space, a space race living on a planet in orbit around a star, as others are also doing. Mankind is not unique, as he fondly imagines. He is merely a part of the vast interstellar human family bred and nurtured by us through the eons of time on planets in different solar systems throughout the galaxy.

Family | Mankind | Race | Space | Time | Unique | Wisdom |

William Warburton

Of all exercises there are none of so much importance, or so immediately our concern, as those which let us into the knowledge of our own nature. Others may exercise the understanding or amuse the imagination; but these only can improve the heart and form the human mind to wisdom.

Character | Heart | Imagination | Knowledge | Mind | Nature | Understanding | Wisdom |

Catharine Trotter Cockburn

Even granting the author [Rutherford]... his main principle, ‘That every man’s own happiness is the ultimate end, which nature and reason teach him to pursue’, why may not nature and reason teach him, too, to have some desire to see others happy as well as himself, or give him some delight in doing what seems fit and right, if these things do not interfere with his own happiness?... Why may he not, with the pursuit of that end, join some other pursuits not inconsistent with it, instead of transforming every benevolent affection, every moral view, into self-interest? This surely neither does honour to religion, nor justice to human nature.

Character | Desire | Happy | Human nature | Justice | Man | Nature | Reason | Religion | Right | Self | Self-interest | Teach | Happiness |

Chayim Efrayim Zaichyk

If you have a positive attitude towards the events of your life, even though to an outside observer your life might seem full of suffering, you nevertheless will live a happy life. What to others might seem misfortunes, you will view as opportunities for spiritual growth.

Character | Events | Growth | Happy | Life | Life | Suffering | Will |

Yitzchok Waldshein

When do we get angry at another person? When he does something against our wishes. Therefore if you give up your demands that others should behave towards you in a certain way, you will not get angry.

Character | Will | Wishes |

Francis Wayland

It is by what we ourselves have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be remembered after ages. It is by thought that has aroused the intellect from its slumbers, which has given luster to virtue and dignity to truth, or by those examples which have inflamed the soul with the love of goodness.

Character | Dignity | Love | Soul | Thought | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Intellect | Thought |

John Greenleaf Whittier

Search thine own heart. What paineth thee in others in thyself may be.

Character | Heart | Search |