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

Eldridge Cleaver, fully Leroy Eldridge Cleaver

The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.

Character | Price | Wisdom |

Alice Cary

The human heart is a mirror of the things that are near and far.

Character | Heart | Wisdom |

Elizabeth Carew, Lady Carew, formerly Lady Elizabeth Bryan

The fairest action of our human life is scorning to revenge an injury; for who forgives without a further strife, his adversary’s heart to him doth tie: and ‘tis a firmer conquest, truly said, to win the heart than overthrow the head.

Action | Character | Conquest | Heart | Life | Life | Revenge |

William Ellery Channing

Contempt of all outward things that come in competition with duty fulfills the ideal of human greatness. It is sanctioned by conscience, that universal and eternal lawgiver, whose chief principle is, that everything must be yielded up for right.

Character | Competition | Conscience | Contempt | Duty | Eternal | Greatness | Right |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

No piled-up wealth, no social station, no throne, reaches as high as that spiritual plane upon which every human being stands by virtue of his humanity.

Character | Humanity | Virtue | Virtue | Wealth |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

The best answer to all objections urged against prayer is that fact that man cannot help praying; for we may be sure that which is so spontaneous and ineradicable in human nature has its fitting objects and methods in the arrangement of a boundless Providence.

Character | Human nature | Man | Nature | Prayer | Providence |

Henry Clay

In all the affairs of human life, social as well as political, I have remarked that courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest to the grateful and appreciating heart.

Character | Heart | Life | Life |

Horace Bushnell

By moral power we mean the power of a life and a character, the power of good and great purposes, the power which comes at length to reside in a man distinguished in some course of estimable or great conduct. No other power of man compares with this, and there is no individual who may not be measurably invested with it.

Character | Conduct | Good | Individual | Life | Life | Man | Power |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

There is no mean work save that which is sordidly selfish; there is no irreligious work save that which is morally wrong; while in every sphere of life “the post of honor is the post of duty.”

Character | Duty | Honor | Life | Life | Work | Wrong |

Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz

In the eyes of a wise person, illusory honor is very cheap. Wisdom enables a person to live a life of light and elevation, enabling him to leave pettiness behind.

Character | Honor | Life | Life | Light | Wisdom | Wise |

Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton

One of the mistakes in the conduct of human life is to suppose that other men's opinions are to make us happy.

Character | Conduct | Happy | Life | Life | Men | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

The domestic relations precede, and in our present existence are worth more than all our other social ties. They give the first throb to the heart, and unseal the deep fountains of its love. Home is the chief school of human virtue. Its responsibilities, joys, sorrows, smiles, tears, hopes, and solicitudes form the chief interest of human life.

Character | Existence | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Present | Tears | Virtue | Virtue | Worth |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it foregoes revenge, and dares to forgive an injury.

Character | Revenge | Soul | Forgive |

Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy; of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

Action | Character | Enemy | Friend | Thought | Thought |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

Character | Choice | Growth |

Friedrich Engels

Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives or systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves - two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject.

Capacity | Character | Ends | Existence | Freedom | Good | Knowledge | Means | Men | Nature | Nothing | Reality | Thought | Will | Work | Govern | Thought |

Hans Denk

Ceremonies in themselves are not sin; but whoever supposes that he can attain to life either by baptism or by partaking of bread is still in superstition.

Character | Life | Life | Sin | Superstition |

John Dewey

The dominant vocation of all human beings at all times is living - intellectual and moral growth.

Character | Growth |