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

Robert Hall

All attempts to urge men forward, even in the right path, beyond the measure of their light, are impracticable; and unlawful, if they were practicable; augment their light, conciliate their affections, and they will follow of their own accord.

Character | Light | Men | Right | Will |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

The faculty of self-help is that which distinguished man from animals; that it is the Godlike element, or holds within itself the Godlike element, of his constitution.

Character | Man | Self |

Henry Home, Lord Kames

Nothing so uncertain as general reputation. A man injures me from humor, passion, or interest; hates me because he has injured me; and speaks ill of me because he hates me.

Character | Humor | Man | Nothing | Passion | Reputation |

Henry Home, Lord Kames

The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so.

Character | Men |

Matthew Henson. fully Matthew Alexander "Matt" Henson

There can be no conquest to the man who dwells in the narrow and small environment of a groveling life, and there can be no vision to the man the horizon of whose vision is limited by the bounds of self. But the great things of the world, the great accomplishments of the world, have been achieved by men who had high ideals and who have received great visions. The path is not easy, the climbing is rugged and hard, but the glory at the end is worthwhile.

Character | Conquest | Glory | Ideals | Life | Life | Man | Men | Self | Vision | World |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

As a wise man in time of peace prepares for war.

Character | Man | Peace | Time | War | Wise |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We do not learn to know men through their coming to us. To find out what sort of persons they are, we must go to them.

Character | Men | Learn |

David Grayson, pseudonym of Ray Stannard Baker

All times are great exactly in proportion as men feel, profoundly, their indebtedness to something or other... A feeling of immeasurable obligation puts life into a man and fight into him, and joy into him.

Character | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Men | Obligation |

Henry Home, Lord Kames

No man ever did a designed injury to another, but at the same time he did a greater to himself.

Character | Man | Time |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which Go has manifested to us.

Character | Children | God | Love | Men | Parents | God |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

Many men spend their lives gazing at their own shadows, and so dwindle away into shadows thereof.

Character | Men |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

No public man can be a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man's-land between honesty and dishonesty.

Character | Dishonesty | Honesty | Land | Little | Man | Public |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies.

Character | Good | Men |

Thomas Hobbes

Whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc., and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of all men upon the like occasions.

Character | Fear | Hope | Men | Reason |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that, a hundred years after he is dead and forgotten, men whoever heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought.

Character | Joy | Men | Thought | Will |

Joseph Hall, fully Bishop Joseph Hall

The drowning man snatches at every twig.

Character | Man |