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

Ezra Taft Benson

Humility responds to God's will-to the fear of His judgments and to the needs of those around us. To the proud, the applause of the world rings in their ears; to the humble, the applause of heaven warms their hearts. Someone has said, "Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man."

Boys | Children | Church | Desire | Family | Future | Giving | Hope | Man | Men | Mission | Prayer | Principles | Reading | Religion | Will | Old |

Felix Adler

For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith.

Day | Prejudice | Rest | Time |

Felix Adler

Gladness, in some instances, springs from a natural buoyancy of temperament, and is quite consistent with shallowness and superficiality of character. In other cases it is coincident with the swift flow of the currents of the blood, and ceases when the stream flows more slowly and begins to stagnate. Or it is due to gifts which an exceptional good fortune showers into the laps of favoured mortals. Gladness of this sort comes with happiness and departs with it.

Baseness | Beginning | Cruelty | Day | Earth | Father | Men | Object | Peace | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Time | Cruelty |

Ezra Taft Benson

Think of the repentance that could take place with lives changed, marriages preserved, and homes strengthened, if pride did not keep us from confessing our sins and forsaking them.

Fear | God | Guidance | Men | Peace | Prayer | Spirit | Will | Guidance | God |

Ezra Taft Benson

Pride does not look up to God and care about what is right. It looks sideways to man and argues who is right. Pride is manifest in the spirit of contention. Was it not through pride that the devil became the devil? Christ wanted to serve. The devil wanted to rule. Christ wanted to bring men to where He was. The devil wanted to be above men. Christ removed self as the force in His perfect life. It was not my will, but thine be done (see Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42).

Comfort | Need | Prayer | Trials |

Ezra Taft Benson

One good yardstick as to whether a person might be the right one for you is this: in her presence, do you think your noblest thoughts, do you aspire to your finest deeds, do you wish you were better than you are?

Appearance | Change | Character | Day | Disgrace | Heart | Important | Injustice | Injustice | Joy | Lesson | Pain | Parents | Peace | Play | Resolution | Understanding | Circumstance | Teacher |

Faith Baldwin

I have learned over a period of time to be almost unconsciously grateful--as a child is--for a sunny day, blue water, flowers in a vase, a tree turning red. I have learned to be glad at dawn and when the sky is dark. Only children and a few spiritually evolved people are born to feel gratitude as naturally as they breathe, without even thinking. Most of us come to it step by painful step, to discover that gratitude is a form of acceptance.

Day | Will |

Faith Popcorn, born Faith Plotkin

We do a lot of brainstorming with our talent base of 6,500 experts globally,

Day | People | Power | Trouble |

Ezra Taft Benson

Our Heavenly Father is always nearÂ… Thank God we can reach out and tap that

Day | Knowing | Think |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Day | Good | Music | Poetry |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

My life has been devoted to peacemaking.

Day | God | Means | Peace | Religion | God |

Felix Adler

We should seek to free the moral life from the embarrassments and entanglements in which it has been involved by the quibbles of the schools and the mutual antagonisms of the sects; to introduce into it an element of downrightness and practical earnestness; above all, to secure to the modern world, in its struggle with manifold evil, the boon of moral unity, despite intellectual diversity.

Appearance | Prayer | Regard |

Gustave Flaubert

The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of--I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters--I live and breathe them.

Day | Good | Man |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.

Day |

Gustave Flaubert

There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one?s vanity?the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women.

Day | Fate | God | Hate | Life | Life | Nothing | Fate | God |

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.

Day |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Believing passionately in the palpably not true... is the chief occupation of mankind.

Day | Will |

Gustave Flaubert

We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity... That's what being really human means.

Day | People | Rest | Right |

Gustave Flaubert

We were Red Romantics, perfectly ridiculous to be sure, but in full bloom. The little good which remains to me comes from that epoch.

Day | Work |