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

Honoré de Balzac

Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart, like a viper in its hole.

Character | Envy | Heart |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

To have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more wilt thou see?

Character | Life | Life |

H. B.

I live in the world, but I seem to myself not of it!.. Natural phenomena are but the shadows of the spirit form which they spring, as the human face changes under the influence of love, hatred or fear... When, O when, shall I be able to reveal its poetry? I see everywhere and in ever object unceasing motion, and in that motion a creative force forever and forever repeating and re-repeating the same simple process as to infinity. Through all nature the grand rhythms roll and heaven and earth are filled with the melody. Men are but boys chasing shadows. The spiritual significance of the world none seem to see - the infinite simplicity of its process are none care to understand.

Boys | Care | Character | Earth | Fear | Force | Heaven | Influence | Love | Melody | Men | Nature | Object | Phenomena | Poetry | Simplicity | Spirit | World |

Eric Berne, born as Leonard Bernstein

Every man must, in a measure, be alone in the world. No heart was ever cast in the same mould as that which we bear within us.

Character | Heart | Man | World |

Francis Ellington Abbot

Just as a tested and rugged virtue of the moral hero is worth more than the lovely, tender, untried innocence of the child, so is the massive strength of a soul that has conquered truth for itself worth more than the soft peach-bloom faith of a soul that takes truth on trust.

Character | Faith | Hero | Innocence | Soul | Strength | Trust | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Worth |

Charles Francis Adams II

More than all, and above all Washington was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example.

Character | Control | Example | Influence | Men | Present | Self |

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 |

Simeon ben Azai, sometimes Ben Azai

The reward of doing one duty is the power to do another.

Character | Duty | Power | Reward |

Saul Bellow

In every community there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don't mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power. While in the parlors of indignation the right-thinking citizen brings his heart to a boil. In here, the human bosom -- mine, yours, everybody's -- there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward. 'If thou canst not love, what art thou?' Are you with me?

Art | Character | Heart | Indignation | Love | Man | People | Power | Rest | Soul | Art |

Orlando A. Battistam, fully Orlando Aloysius Battista, aka O.A. Battista

Tolerance consists of seeing certain things with your heart instead of with your eyes.

Character | Heart |

Michael Barenbaum

Envy destroys peace of mind and happiness. An envious person’s life is full of suffering and resentment. He is never happy with what he himself has.

Character | Envy | Happy | Life | Life | Mind | Peace | Resentment | Suffering |

Hugh Blair

That discipline which corrects the eagerness of worldly passions, which fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, which enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes to it matter of enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity than all the provisions which we can make of the goods of fortune.

Character | Discipline | Enjoyment | Fortune | Heart | Knowledge | Mind | Principles |

Arthur Brisbane

Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains.

Character | Good | Power | Regret | Time |