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

William B. J. Martin

It is more important to listen to questions than to answer them. To listen with full intent, with full openness, with a genuine desire to understand not the question only, but the question behind the question, and to be at one with the questioner - this is an engagement very difficult.

Character | Desire | Important | Openness | Question | Engagement | Understand |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Nothing so deeply imprints anything in our memory as the desire to forget it.

Character | Desire | Memory | Nothing |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge. We try all the ways that can lead us to it. When reason fails us, we use experience.. which is a weaker and less dignified means. But truth is so great a thing that we must not disdain any medium that will lead us to it.

Character | Desire | Disdain | Experience | Knowledge | Means | Reason | Truth | Will |

John O'Brien

The desire of one man to live on the fruits of another's labor is the original sin of the world.

Character | Desire | Labor | Man | Sin | World |

Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

The health of the soul is to have its faculties - reason, high spirit, and desire - happily tempered, with reason in command, and reining in both the other two, like restive horses. The special name of this health is temperance.

Character | Desire | Health | Reason | Soul | Spirit |

James Thomas Rapier

There is a cowardly propensity in the human heart that delights in oppressing somebody else, and in the gratification of this base desire we always select a victim that can be outraged with safety.

Character | Desire | Heart | Victim |

Francis Quarles

If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father’s vices; thou canst not rebuke that in children that they behold practiced in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts; such as thy behavior is before they children’s faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents backs.

Behavior | Character | Children | Desire | Father | Parents | Reason | Rebuke | Child |

Publius Syrus

To shun desire is to conquer a kingdom.

Character | Desire |

Francis Quarles

If you desire to be magnanimous, undertake nothing rashly, and fear nothing thou undertakes; fear nothing but infamy; dare anything but injury; the measure of magnanimity is neither to be rash nor timorous.

Character | Desire | Fear | Infamy | Magnanimity | Nothing |

Chaim Leib Shmuelevitz

Regardless of how much honor he receives, an honor-seeker will feel upset if even one person does not show him the honor and approval he demands. There will never be an amount of honor that will satisfy him. Physical desires have a saturation point, but the desire for honor is based on falsehood and illusion and is really nothing in itself.

Character | Desire | Falsehood | Honor | Illusion | Nothing | Will | Approval |

William Makepeace Thackeray

A man is seldom more manly than when he is what you called unmanned - the source of his emotion is championship, pity, and courage; the instinctive desire to cherish those who are innocent and unhappy, and defend those who are tender and weak.

Character | Courage | Desire | Man | Pity |