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

Euripedes NULL

Inside the souls of wealthy men bleak famine lives while minds of stature struggle trapped in starving bodies. How then can man distinguish man, what test can he use? The test of wealth? That measure means poverty of mind; of poverty? The pauper owns one thing, the sickness of his condition, a compelling teacher of evil; by nerve in war? Yet who, when a spear is cast across his face, will stand to witness his companion’s courage? We can only toss our judgments random on the wind.

Character | Courage | Distinguish | Evil | Man | Means | Men | Mind | Poverty | Struggle | War | Wealth | Will | Witness | Teacher |

Norman Douglas, aka George Norman Douglas

To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him - two.

Character | Friend |

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

Whenever, in the course of the daily hunt, the hunter comes upon a scene that is strikingly beautiful or sublime - a black thundercloud with the rainbow’s glowing arch above the mountain, a white waterfall in the heart of a green gorge, a vast prairie tinged with the blood-red of the sunset - he pauses for an instant in the attitude of worship. He sees no need for setting apart one day in seven as a holy day, because to him all days are God’s days.

Character | Day | God | Heart | Need | Worship |

William Cowper

Wisdom and Goodness are twin born, one heart must hold both sister, never seen apart.

Character | Heart | Wisdom |

Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow

History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history.

Character | History | Wrong |

Maria Edgeworth

There are two sorts of content; one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence. The first is virtue; the other, a vice.

Character | Indolence | Virtue | Virtue |

Albert Einstein

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. My peace of mind is often troubled by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too heavily from the work of other men.

Character | Day | Earth | Fate | Knowing | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mind | Order | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Smile | Sympathy | Work | Fate | Happiness |

George Dawson

How majestic is naturalness. I have never met a man whom I really consider a great man who was not always natural and simple. Affection is inevitably the mark of one not sure of himself.

Character | Man |

Madame du Deffand, Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand

Let us strive to improve ourselves, for we cannot remain stationary: one either progresses or retrogrades.

Character |

Diogenes Laërtius, aka "Diogenes the Cynic"

We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less.

Character | Order |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the grief of one who falls from the serene activity into the absorbing soul wasting struggle.

Character | Grief | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Soul | Struggle | Thought | Thought | Understand |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Young love-making - that gossamer web!... The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.

Character | Life | Life | Love | Trust | Yearnings |

Antoinette Du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières

No one is ever satisfied with his fortune or dissatisfied with his understanding.

Character | Fortune | Understanding |

Helen Gahagan Douglas

Character isn’t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains.

Action | Anger | Character | Fear | Hate | Mind | Self | Thought | Thought |

Arthur Powell Davies

Life is not the creature of circumstance. Indeed, in the whole universe of everything that is, life alone, life by its very nature, is the antagonist of circumstance... If there is any one thing that is utterly clear about the nature of life, it is that it was meant to master circumstance. The spirit conquers all things when the spirit wills it, and no excuse remains when we fail to live as we wish.

Character | Life | Life | Nature | Spirit | Universe | Wills |

Madame Deluzy, Luzy Dorothee

There is but one book for genius - nature.

Character | Genius | Nature |

Edward Everett

Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity.

Blessings | Character | Conduct | Fame | Posterity | Public | Success | Virtue | Virtue |

Thomas D'Urfey

None are fools always, tho every one sometimes.

Character | Wisdom |

Orville Dewey

How many a knot of mystery and misunderstanding would be untied by one word spoken in simple and confiding truth of heart! How many a solitary place would be made glad if love were there, and how many a dark dwelling would be filled with light!

Character | Circumstances | Existence | Future | Life | Life | Love | Mystery | Teach | Truth |

Tyron Edwards

He is one of the noblest conquerors who carries on a successful warfare against his own appetites and passions, and has them under wise and full control.

Character | Control | Wise |