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

William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall

You need more tact in the dangerous art of giving than in any other social action.

Action | Art | Character | Giving | Need | Tact | Art |

Buddha, Gautama Buddha, or The Buddha, also Gotama Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and Buddha Śākyamuni NULL

Do not become attached to the things you like, do not maintain aversion to the things you dislike. Sorrow, fear and bondage come from one's likes and dislikes.

Character | Fear | Sorrow |

John Albert Broadus

All the sin that has darkened human life an saddened human history began in believing in a falsehood.

Character | Falsehood | History | Life | Life | Sin |

Stephan Bodian

Give up the notion that there is a final state to attain. Spiritual life consists of ongoing practice undertaken as a lifetime work. This realization breeds humility, especially when we realize that in our initial infatuation with enlightenment, we underestimate the amount of inner work necessary to free us from our addictive patterns of thought and behavior.

Behavior | Character | Enlightenment | Humility | Life | Life | Practice | Thought | Work | Thought |

James Boswell

There is no passion so distressing as fear, which gives us great pain and makes us appear contemptible in our own eyes to the last degree. Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

Character | Fear | Government | Men | Order | Pain | Passion |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

The trouble of the many and various aims of mortal men bring them much care, and herein they go forward by different paths but strive to reach one end, which is happiness. And that good is that, to which if any man attain, he can desire nothing further... Happiness is a state which is made perfect by the union of all good things. This end all men seek to reach, as I said, though by different paths. For there is implanted by nature in the minds of men a desire for the true good; but error leads them astray towards false goods by wrong paths.

Aims | Care | Character | Desire | Error | Good | Man | Men | Mortal | Nature | Nothing | Wrong | Trouble | Happiness |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire. A generous habit of thought and action carries with it an incalculable influence.

Action | Character | Example | Habit | Influence | Reason | Thought | Thought |

Jean de La Bruyère

It is boorish to give with a bad grace. If the act of giving entails an effort, what matters the additional cost of a smile?

Character | Cost | Effort | Giving | Grace | Smile |

Jean de La Bruyère

Liberality consists less in giving profusely, than in giving judiciously.

Character | Giving |

Jean de La Bruyère

We hope to grow old, and yet we fear old age; that is, we are willing to live, and afraid to die.

Age | Character | Fear | Hope | Old age | Afraid | Old |

Thomas Brooks

When you have overcome one temptation, you must be ready to enter the lists with another. As distrust, in some sense, is the mother of safety, so security is the gate of danger. A man had need to fear this most of all, that he fears not at all.

Character | Danger | Distrust | Fear | Man | Mother | Need | Security | Sense | Temptation |

Léon Blum, fully André Léon Blum

Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice.

Character | Choice | Courage | Morality |

Carl Victor de Bonstetten

To speak well supposes a habit of attention which shows itself in the thought; by language we learn to think and above all to develop thought.

Attention | Character | Habit | Language | Thought | Wisdom | Learn | Think |

Jean de La Bruyère

The slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many as there are people useful to his fortune.

Character | Fortune | Man | People |