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

Allen E. Claxton

Many men who spend an hour a day in physical exercises to keep fit refuse to spend an hour a week in the cultivation of their morals and their ethics. We have put so little emphasis on developing our souls that our children are beginning to doubt if we have any souls at all.

Beginning | Character | Children | Cultivation | Day | Doubt | Ethics | Little | Men |

Tyron Edwards

It is the fixed law of the universe, that little things are but parts of the great. The grass does not spring up full grown, by eruptions: it rises by an increase so noiseless and gentle, as not to disturb an angel's ear - perhaps to be invisible to an angel's eye. The rain does not fall in masses, but in drops, or even in the breath-like moisture of the fine mist. The planets do not leap from end to end of their orbits, but inch by inch, and line by line, it is that they circle the heavens. Intellect, feeling, habit, character, all become what they are through the influence of little things. And in morals and religion, it is by little things - by little influences acting on us, or seemingly little decisions made by us, that everyone of us is going, not by leaps, yet surely by inches, either to life or death eternal.

Character | Death | Eternal | Habit | Influence | Law | Life | Life | Little | Religion | Universe |

John Dewey

The whole history of science, art and morals proves that the mind that appears in individuals, is not as such individual mind. The former is in itself a system of belief, recognitions, and ignorances, of acceptances and rejections, of expectancies and appraisals of meanings which have been instituted under the influence of custom and tradition.

Art | Belief | Character | Custom | History | Individual | Influence | Mind | Science | System | Tradition | Art |

John Dewey

Happiness is fundamental in morals only because happiness is not something to be sought for, but is something now attained, even in the midst of pain and trouble, whenever recognition of our ties with nature and with fellow-men releases and informs our action.

Action | Character | Men | Nature | Pain | Happiness |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

Character | Government | Honor | People |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

The only moral virtue of war is that it compels the capitalist system to look itself in the face and admit it is a fraud. It compels the present society to admit that it has no morals it will not sacrifice for gain.

Character | Fraud | Present | Sacrifice | Society | System | Virtue | Virtue | War | Will | Society |

George Jean Nathan

To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination.

Art | Character | Imagination | Art |

Ronald E. Osborn

When the taste is purified, the morals are not easily corrupted. Whatever injures the body, the morals, or the mind, will lessen or vitiate taste; thus, disorders of the body and violent passions of the mind, will do this, and so will also excessive care or covetousness; but above all, a habit of intemperance, and keeping low company will greatly deprave that which was once a good taste.

Body | Care | Character | Good | Habit | Intemperance | Mind | Taste | Will |

Lord Samuel, Herbert Louis Samuel, First Viscount Samuel

Without doubt the greatest injury of all was done by basing morals on myth. For, sooner or later, myth is recognized for what it is, and disappears. Then morality loses the foundation on which it has been built.

Character | Doubt | Morality | Myth |

Johann Gottfried Seume

Idleness is the stupidity of the body, and stupidity is the idleness of the mind.

Body | Character | Idleness | Mind | Stupidity |

Albert Schweitzer

Wherever there is lost the consciousness that every man is an object of concern for us just because he is a man, civilization and morals are shaken, and the advance to fully developed inhumanity is only a question of time.

Character | Civilization | Consciousness | Inhumanity | Man | Object | Question | Time |

Alan William Smolowe

The development of values, morals and ethics expands a person's ability to express freedom.

Ability | Character | Ethics | Freedom |

Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it that they are wrong.

Character | Wrong |

Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

It is not best that we use our morals week days; it gets them out of repair for Sundays.

Character |

Cyrus Augustus Bartol

Good manners and good morals are sworn friends and fast allies.

Good | Manners | Wisdom | Friends |

Jean de La Bruyère

There are only two ways of getting on in the world: by one's own industry, or by the stupidity of others.

Industry | Stupidity | Wisdom | World |

Frederic Eggleston, fully Sir Frederic William Eggleston

The great task of peace is to work morals into it. The only sort of peace that will be real is one in which everybody takes his share or responsibility. World organizations and conferences will be of no value unless there is improvement in the relation of men to men.

Improvement | Men | Peace | Responsibility | Will | Wisdom | Work | World | Value |