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

Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

Character | Heart | Inspiration | Mind | Will | Wisdom |

Max Brod

The greatness of a nation does not depend on the character of its blood or race... [but] consists of the values it produces.

Character | Greatness | Race |

Thomas Chalmers

The human mind feels restless and dissatisfied under the anxieties of ignorance. It longs for the repose of conviction; and to gain this repose it will often rather precipitate its conclusions than wait for the tardy lights of observation and experiment. There is such a thing, too, as the love of simplicity and system, a prejudice of the understanding which disposes it to include al the phenomena of nature under a few sweeping generalities, and indolence which loves to repose on the beauties of a theory rather than encounter the fatiguing detail of its evidences.

Character | Experiment | Ignorance | Indolence | Love | Mind | Nature | Observation | Phenomena | Prejudice | Repose | Simplicity | System | Understanding | Will |

William Ellery Channing

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

Character |

William Ellery Channing

Fiction is no longer a mere amusement; but transcendent genius, accommodating itself to the character of the age, has seized upon this province of literature, and turned fiction from a toy into a mighty engine.

Age | Character | Genius | Literature |

Shalom Cohen

A brilliant mind without faith is like a beautiful face without eyes.

Character | Faith | Mind | Wisdom |

Samuel Butler

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly his character appear in spite of him.

Character | Literature | Man | Music | Work |

William Ellery Channing

Reading furnishes the mind only with the materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

Character | Knowledge | Mind | Reading | Thinking |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Character | Mind | Nothing | Object |

Yehuda Leib Chasman

It is impossible to remove all desires. But we have the ability to channel our desires from physical and material pleasures to spiritual endeavors... Someone who finds fulfillment in spiritual matters is not being deprived of pleasure. Rather he is gaining more pleasure than is possible in material matters.

Ability | Fulfillment | Pleasure |

Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz

There is no greater joy for a wise man than the joy of improving his character traits.

Character | Joy | Man | Wise |

Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, aka Lord Clarendon

Anger is the most impotent passion that accompanies the mind of man; it effects nothing it goes about; and hurts the man who is possessed by it more directly than any other against whom it is directed.

Anger | Character | Man | Mind | Nothing | Passion |

John Caird

The monarch of his own mind is the only real potentate.

Character | Mind |

William Ellery Channing

Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge; and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.

Character | Growth | Ignorance | Knowledge | Mind | Nature | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no other is, and to do what no other can do.

Character |

George Barrell Cheever

As character to be used for eternity must be formed in time and in good time, so good habits to be used for happiness in this life must be formed early; and then they will be a treasure to be desired in the house of the wise, and an oil of life in their dwellings.

Character | Eternity | Good | Life | Life | Time | Will | Wise | Happiness |