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

Malcolm R. Sutherland, Jr.

We are forced to measure each moment partly in and of itself, for if everything is justified solely by the future, life becomes rather futile.

Character | Future | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Stephen Berrien Stanton

The goal of life is imminent in each moment, each thought, word, act, and does not have to be sought apart from these. It consists in no specific achievement, but the start of mind in which everything is done, the quality infused into existence. The function of man is not to attain an object, but to fulfill a purpose; not to accomplish but be accomplished.

Achievement | Character | Existence | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Object | Purpose | Purpose | Thought |

Ludwig Tieck, fully Johann Ludwig Tieck

Measure not life by the hopes and enjoyments of this world, but by the preparation it makes for another; looking forward to what you shall be rather than backward to what you have been.

Character | Life | Life | World |

Ganga Stone

The desire to serve others is the highest impulse of the human heart and the rewards of such service are beyond measure. If you wish to taste this, then just do it. Just take one step... You will see that the tyranny of self-concern, worry, and trivial pursuits can be released from your life with that single step. It doesn't really matter what you do, it only matters that you do it.

Character | Desire | Heart | Impulse | Life | Life | Self | Service | Taste | Tyranny | Will | Worry |

William Graham Sumner

Socialists are filled with the enthusiasm of equality... Equality of possession or of rights and equality before the law are diametrically opposed to each other. The object of equality before the law is to make the state entirely neutral.

Character | Enthusiasm | Equality | Law | Object | Rights |

Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

There are not good things enough in life to indemnify us for the neglect of a single duty.

Character | Duty | Enough | Good | Life | Life | Neglect |

Frederick K. Stamm

When no new thoughts fill the mind - when no horizons beckon - when life is in the past, not in the future - you are on the way to uselessness.

Character | Future | Life | Life | Mind | Past |

Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

Extinguish vanity in the mind, and you naturally retrench the little superfluities of garniture and equipage. The blossoms will fall of themselves when the root that nourishes them is destroyed.

Character | Little | Mind | Superfluities | Will |

Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele

The envious man is in pain upon all occasions which ought to give him pleasure. The relish of his life is inverted; and the objects which administer the highest satisfaction to those who are exempt from this passion give the quickest pangs to persons who are subject to it. All the perfections of their fellow creatures are odious. Youth, beauty, valor and wisdom are provocations of their displeasure. What a wretched and apostate state is this! to be offended with excellence, and to hate a man because we approve him!

Beauty | Character | Excellence | Hate | Life | Life | Man | Pain | Passion | Pleasure | Valor | Valor | Wisdom | Youth |

Menachem Taryash

Unless you learn to control your desires for things you lack, your entire life will be full of pain and suffering. Even an extremely wealthy person will always find some new thing to desire.

Character | Control | Desire | Life | Life | Pain | Suffering | Will | Learn |

Robert Southey

The disappointed man turns his thoughts toward a state of existence where his wiser desires may be fixed with the certainty of faith; the successful man feels that the objects which he has ardently pursued fail to satisfy the cravings of an immortal spirit; the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, that he may save his soul alive.

Character | Existence | Faith | Man | Soul | Spirit | Wickedness |

Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate; when he can't afford it and when he can.

Character | Life | Life | Man |

John Greenleaf Whittier

There's life alone in duty done, and rest alone in striving.

Character | Duty | Life | Life | Rest |