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

Christian D. Larson

Every desire for power, ability, wisdom, harmony, life, greatness will impress itself upon the subconscious and will cause the thing desired to be produced in the great within. What is produced in the within will come forth into expression in the personality; therefore, by knowing how to impress the subconscious, man may give his personal self any quality desired, in any quantity desired. What man may desire to become, that he can become, and the art of directing and impressing the subconscious is the secret. The perpetual awakening of the great within will produce a greatness, because to the powers and the possibilities of the great within there is no limit, neither is there any end.

Ability | Art | Awakening | Cause | Character | Desire | Greatness | Harmony | Knowing | Life | Life | Man | Personality | Power | Self | Will | Wisdom | Art |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

The policy of adapting one’s self to circumstances makes all ways smooth.

Character | Circumstances | Policy | Self |

Walter Lippmann

Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.

Character | Conservatism | Effort | Men | Success |

Joshua L. Liebman, fully Joshua Loth Liebman

Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another's beliefs, practices and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them.

Character | Effort | Understand |

Theodore T. Munger

The meaning, the value, the truth of life can be learned only by an actual performance of its duties, and truth can be learned and the soul saved in no other way.

Character | Life | Life | Meaning | Soul | Truth |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The lack of wealth is easily repaired; but the poverty of the soul is irreparable.

Character | Poverty | Soul | Wealth |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The soul [that] has no established aim loses itself.

Character | Soul |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Old age puts more wrinkles in our minds than on our faces; and we never, or rarely, see a soul that in growing old does not come to smell sour and musty. Man grows and dwindles in his entirety.

Age | Character | Man | Old age | Soul | Old |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

A soul guaranteed against prejudice is marvelously advanced toward tranquillity.

Character | Prejudice | Soul | Tranquility |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The want of goods is easily repaired, but the poverty of the soul is irreparable.

Character | Poverty | Soul |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Vice leaves repentance in the soul like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself; for reason effaces all other griefs and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance, which is so much the more grievous, by reason it springs within, as the cold and hot of fevers are more sharp than those that only strike upon the outward skin.

Character | Reason | Repentance | Soul |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Anyone who wants to be cured of ignorance must confess it... Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry its progress, ignorance its end.

Character | Ignorance | Inquiry | Philosophy | Progress | Wants | Wonder |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Greatness of soul is not so much mounting high and pressing forward, as knowing how to put oneself in order and circumscribe oneself. It regards as great all that is enough and shows its elevation by preferring moderate things to eminent ones. There is nothing so beautiful and just as to play the man well and fitly, nor any knowledge so arduous as to know how to live this life well and naturally; and of all our maladies the most barbarous is to despise our being.

Character | Despise | Enough | Greatness | Knowing | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Order | Play | Soul |

Joaquin Miller, formally Cincinnatus Heine (or Hiner) Miller

That man who lives for self alone lives for the meanest mortal known.

Character | Man | Mortal | Self |

Henry Spencer Moore

Virtue is to her self the best reward.

Character | Reward | Self | Virtue | Virtue |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.

Character | Fear | Man | Wants |