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

Arthur Aughey

Cheerfulness sharpens the edge and removes the rust from the mind. A joyous heart supplies oil to our inward machinery, and makes the whole of our powers work with ease and efficiency.

Character | Cheerfulness | Efficiency | Heart | Mind | Work |

Berthold Auerbach

Garden work consists more in uprooting weeds than in planting seed. This applies also to teaching.

Character | Work |

George Matthew Adams

Upon every hand we meet with those who have some secret resentment that is ever being nurtured within their hearts. They resent the success, or happiness of some one whom they think is less deserving than they are. They resent the just recognition that comes to others from work and long effort to excel. Or, they may resent being born poor - or resent the fact that they were even born!... Strive to excel, strive to achieve, where others have failed, and you will find no space within your mind to lodge resentment. Resentment is the child of selfishness, foolish envy, and inactivity... Our life upon this earth is too valuable for resentment of any kind. There is so much to do, so much to learn - so little time in which to live and work it all out.

Character | Earth | Effort | Envy | Inactivity | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Resentment | Selfishness | Space | Success | Time | Will | Work | Child | Happiness | Learn | Think |

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 |

George Matthew Adams

It is indifference which is the cause of most of our unhappiness. Indifference to religion, to the happiness of others, and to the precious gift of freedom, and the wide liberty that is the inheritance of all in a free land. Are we our "Brother's Keeper"? We certainly are! If we had no regard for others' feelings or fortune, we would grow cold and indifferent to life itself. Bound up with selfishness, we could not hope for the success that could easily be ours.

Cause | Character | Feelings | Fortune | Freedom | Hope | Indifference | Inheritance | Land | Liberty | Life | Life | Regard | Religion | Selfishness | Success | Unhappiness | Happiness |

Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe

The most feared event in a person’s life is death. But we have the ability to transform our death into the greatest act we will perform in our entire life. We can perceive death as our total submission to the will of the Almighty and find tremendous spiritual elevation.

Ability | Character | Death | Life | Life | Submission | Will |

Tristan Bernard, born Paul Bernard

Your actions, in passing, pass not away, for every good work is a gain of seed for eternal life.

Character | Eternal | Good | Life | Life | Work |

Shlomo Wolbe, aka Wilhelm Wolbe

The greatest manifestation of your love for the Almighty can be expressed on your day of death. Before your death, you might be thinking about how you have not fulfilled all of your wishes and plans. In the moments before your death you might have complaints against the Almighty, or you might fatalistically accept your death by saying, What can be done? My body is giving in to the laws of nature. The doctors have given up hope.” Both of these attitudes are wrong You now face the greatest challenge of your life. You have the potential to submit yourself to the will of the Almighty with love. This level takes preparation. If a person has not mastered control of his thoughts, he is likely to waste his last moments thinking of petty resentments and desires. Frequently confusion and fear of death swallow up every other thought unless one has prepared for that moment.

Body | Challenge | Character | Control | Day | Death | Fear | Giving | Hope | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Thinking | Thought | Waste | Will | Wishes | Wrong | Thought |

Charles Kendall Adams

No student ever attains very eminent success by simply doing what is required of him; it is the amount and excellence of what is over and above the required, that determines the greatness of ultimate distinction.

Character | Distinction | Excellence | Greatness | Success | Wisdom | Excellence |

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 |

John Armstrong

Know then, whatever cheerful and serene supports the mind, supports the body too; hence, the most vital movement mortals feel is hope, the balm and lifeblood of the soul.

Body | Character | Hope | Mind | Soul |

Arthur Aughey

The ability to find fault is believed, by some people, to be a sure sign of great wisdom, when, in most cases, it only indicates narrowness of mind and ill nature.

Ability | Character | Fault | Mind | Nature | People | Wisdom | Fault |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and a vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.

Body | Character | Fame | Fortune | Judgment | Life | Life | Oblivion | Perception | Soul | Time |

Arthur Burns, fully Arthur Frank Burns

In addition to the inflation, we have stagnating productivity. People don’t work the way they used to.

Character | People | Work |

Sarah T. Bolton, fully Sarah Tittle Barrett Bolton

The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of work.

Character | Habit | Success | Wisdom | Work |

Margaret Bourke-White

Only by his action can a man make (himself/his life) whole... You are responsible for what you have done and the people whom you have influenced. In the end it is only the work that counts.

Action | Character | Life | Life | Man | People | Work |

Stephan Bodian

Give up the notion that there is a final state to attain. Spiritual life consists of ongoing practice undertaken as a lifetime work. This realization breeds humility, especially when we realize that in our initial infatuation with enlightenment, we underestimate the amount of inner work necessary to free us from our addictive patterns of thought and behavior.

Behavior | Character | Enlightenment | Humility | Life | Life | Practice | Thought | Work | Thought |

Jean de La Bruyère

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek for no other fuel to judge thy work by; it is good, and made by a good worksman.

Character | Feelings | Good | Spirit | Work |

Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke

The life which is in man is eternal, as all life is eternal; that the soul of man is as immortal as God is; that the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love, and that the happiness of every individual is in the long run absolutely certain.

Character | Eternal | God | Good | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Soul | Universe | Work | World | God | Happiness |