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

Golda Meir, originally named Goldie Mabovitch, later Goldie Myerson

It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? . . . Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.

Accident | Heart | Public |

Jane Goodall, fully Dame Jane Morris Goodall, born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall

I think the best evenings are when we have messages, things that make us think, but we can also laugh and enjoy each other's company.

Think |

Jimmy Carter, fully James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.

Let us learn together and laugh together and work together and pray together, confident that in the end we will triumph together in the right.

Will | Work | Learn |

John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman

Everyone who breathes, high and low, educated and ignorant, young and old, man and woman, has a mission, has a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random; we are not here, that we may go to bed at night, and get up in the morning, toil for our bread, eat and drink, laugh and joke, sin when we have a mind, and reform when we are tired of sinning, rear a family and die. God sees every one of us; He creates every soul, . . . for a purpose.

Family | God | Man | Reform | Sin | World | God |

Joseph Roux

There are people who laugh to show their fine teeth; and there are those who cry to show their good hearts.

Good | People |

Katherine Mansfield, pseudonymn of Kathleen Beauchamp, Mrs. J. M. Murry

When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.

Means | Afraid | Learn |

Karl Marx

‎There comes a time in your life when you have to let go of all the pointless drama and the people who create it and surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard that you forget the bad and focus solely on the good. After all life is too short to be anything but happy.

Focus | Life | Life | People | Time |

Ken Kesey

Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

Leo Busacaglia

A loving relationship is one in which the loved one is free to be himself -- to laugh with me, but never at me; to cry with me, but never because of me; to love life, to love himself, to love being loved. Such a relationship is based upon freedom and can never grow in a jealous heart.

Freedom | Love | Relationship |

Leo Rosten, fully Leo Calvin Rosten, pen name Leonard Q. Ross

We can understand and relate to most people better if you look at them – no matter how impressive they may be – as if they are children. For most of us never really grow up or mature all that much – we simply grow taller. Oh, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.

Better | Life | Life | People | Play | Child | Understand |

Lewis Carroll, pseudonym for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

Everything is funny, if you can laugh at it.

Lin-chi, also Lin-chi Yi-sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai, Rinzai Gigen, Linji, Línjì Yìxuán NULL

When it's time to get dressed, put on your clothes. When you must walk, then walk. When you must sit, then sit. Just be your ordinary self in ordinary life, unconcerned in seeking for Buddhahood. When you're tired, lie down. The fool will laugh at you but the wise man will understand.

Man | Self | Time | Will | Wise |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

It is noticeable how intuitively in age we go back with strange fondness to all that is fresh in the earliest dawn of youth. If we never cared for little children before, we delight to see them roll in the grass over which we hobble on crutches. The grandsire turns wearily from his middle-aged, care-worn son, to listen with infant laugh to the prattle of an infant grandchild. It is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn, and feel most delight in the returning spring.

Age | Children | Dawn | Little | Old |

Lord Brooke, Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, de jure 13th Baron Latimer and 5th Baron Willoughby de Brooke

Weak men often from the very principle of their weakness derive a certain susceptibility; delicacy and taste which render them, in those particulars, much superior to men of stronger and more consistent minds, who laugh at them.

Men | Taste | Weakness |

Lucy Maud Montgomery, aka Maud or L.M. Montgomery

When you've learned to laugh at the things that should be laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn't, you've got wisdom and understanding.

Wisdom |

Lucy Maud Montgomery, aka Maud or L.M. Montgomery

Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.

Strength | Troubles | Learn |

Lucy Maud Montgomery, aka Maud or L.M. Montgomery

Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.

Worth |

Margaret Atwood, fully Margaret Eleanor Atwood

Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

Kill | Men | Will | Afraid |

Malcolm de Chazal

The man who can make others laugh secures more votes for a measure than the man who forces them to think.

Man |

Marjorie Barstow

Learn to laugh at yourselves: you always move better with a smile.

Better |