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

Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch, aka Maggid of Mezeritch

I cannot teach you the ten principles of service. But a little child and a thief can show you what they are. From the child you can learn three things: He is merry for no particular reason; never for a moment is he idle; when he needs something, he demands it vigorously. The thief can instruct you in seven things: He does his service by night; if he does not finish what he has set out to do, in one night, he devotes the next night to it; he and those who work with him love one another; he risks his life for small gains; what he takes has so little value for him that he gives it up for a very small coin; he endures blows and hardship, and it matters nothing to him; he likes his trade and would not exchange it for any other.

Character | Life | Life | Little | Love | Nothing | Principles | Reason | Service | Teach | Work | Child | Learn | Value |

W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Art | Character | Culture | Money | Talking | Writing | Art |

Rabbi Avraham of Sochotchov NULL

Life is something you measure not in years but in precious moments - and in how you value those moments. The responsibility for making such moments meaningful is yours alone. There are no definitions of failure or success except the ones you specify for yourself. You are the meaning of your own life.

Character | Failure | Life | Life | Meaning | Responsibility | Success | Failure | Value |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.

Character | Man | Men | Opinion | Rest | Value |

Samuel Alexander

Though religion... always envelops conduct, the sentiment of religion and the sense of moral value are distinct.

Character | Conduct | Religion | Sense | Sentiment | Value |

Caroline Bird

A liberal-arts education is supposed to provide you with a value system, a standard, a set of ideas, not a job.

Character | Education | Ideas | System | Value |

Yosef Leib Bloch, fully R' Yosef Yehudah Leib Bloch

Young people imagine there is great value in fame. Those with life experience know that in truth publicity is extremely short-lived. The nature of the world is that every piece of news makes an impression for only a very short time. After those few minutes the impression is erased and quickly forgotten. It is as if it never was.

Character | Experience | Fame | Impression | Life | Life | Nature | News | People | Time | Truth | World | Value |

Jean de La Bruyère

It is motive alone that gives real value to the actions of men, and disinterestedness puts the cap to it.

Character | Men | Value |

Euripedes NULL

No man on earth is truly free. All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform.

Character | Conscience | Earth | Fear | Man | Money | Necessity | Opinion | Public |

Albert Einstein

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.

Character | Self | Sense | Value |

Eliyahu de Vidas,

Set aside an amount of money that you will give away if you become angry. Be sure it is a sufficient amount of money to make you think twice before becoming angry.

Character | Money | Will | Think |

Albert Einstein

A successful man is he who receives a great deal from his fellowmen, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them. The value of a man, however, should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

Character | Man | Receive | Service | Value |

Robertson Davies

If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow creatures, let him begin the long, solitary task of perfecting himself.

Character | Man | Wants | Value |

Albert Einstein

I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure personages is the only thing that can lead us to fine ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always irresistibly tempts its owners to abuse it.

Abuse | Cause | Character | Deeds | Example | Humanity | Ideas | Money | Selfishness | Wealth | World |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

Some people gauge their value by what they own. But in reality the entire concept of ownership of possessions is based on an illusion. When you obtain a material object, it does not become part of you. Ownership is merely your right to use specific objects whenever you wish and that no one has a right to take them away from you. How unfortunate is the person who has an ambition to cleave to something impossible to cleave to. Such a person will not obtain what he desires and will experience suffering.

Ambition | Character | Experience | Illusion | Object | People | Possessions | Reality | Right | Suffering | Will | Ambition | Value |

Morris Franklin

There is too much stress today on material things. I try to teach my children not so much the value of cents, but the sense of values.

Character | Children | Sense | Teach | Value |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

A small minority are enabled... to find happiness along the path of love; but far-reaching mental transformations of the erotic function are necessary before this is possible. These people make themselves independent of their object’s acquiescence by transferring the main value from the fact of being loved to their own act of loving; they protect themselves against loss of it by attaching their love not to individual objects but to all men equally, and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by turning away from its sexual aim and modifying the instinct which they induce in themselves by this process - an unchangeable, undeviating, tender attitude - has little superficial likeness to the stormy vicissitudes of genital love, from which it is nevertheless derived.

Character | Individual | Instinct | Little | Love | Men | Object | People | Loss | Vicissitudes | Happiness | Value |