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 Ellery Channing

Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge; and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.

Character | Growth | Ignorance | Knowledge | Mind | Nature | Wisdom |

Samuel Butler

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, but the unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to him - therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.

Character | Man | Progress | World |

William Ellery Channing

Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no other is, and to do what no other can do.

Character |

William Ellery Channing

There are seasons, in human affairs, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. There are periods when to dare, is the highest wisdom.

Character | Good | Soul | Wants | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

The great duty of God’s children is to love one another. This duty on earth takes the name and form of the law of humanity. We are to recognize all men as brethren, no matter where born, or under what sky, or institution or religion they may live. Every man belongs to the race, and owes a duty to mankind... Men cannot, by combining themselves into narrower or larger societies, sever the sacred, blessed bond which joins them to their kind... The law of humanity must reign; over the assertion of all human rights.

Assertion | Character | Children | Duty | Earth | God | Humanity | Law | Love | Man | Mankind | Men | Race | Religion | Rights | Sacred | Blessed |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

The golden age is not in the past, but in the future: not in the origin of human experience, but in its consummate flower: not opening in Eden, but out from Gethsemane.

Age | Character | Experience | Future | Past |

Pierre Charron

Pleasure and pain, though directly opposite, are yet so contrived by nature as to be constant companions; and it is a fact that the same motions and muscles of the face are employed both in laughing and crying.

Character | Nature | Pain | Pleasure |

Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith

Scandal is what one-half the world takes pleasure in inventing, and the other half in believing.

Character | Pleasure | Scandal | World |

William Congreve

Thought precedes the will to think, and error lives ere reason can be born. Reason, the power to guess at right and wrong, the twinkling lamp of wand'ring life, that winks and wakes by turns fooling the follower 'twixt shade and shining.

Character | Error | Power | Reason | Right | Thought | Will | Wisdom |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Consider and act with reference to the true ends of existence. This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

Action | Character | Ends | Eternity | Existence | Life | Life | Will | World |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

Action | Character | Eternity | Life | Life | Will | World |

Eldridge Cleaver, fully Leroy Eldridge Cleaver

The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.

Character | Price | Wisdom |

Alice Cary

The human heart is a mirror of the things that are near and far.

Character | Heart | Wisdom |

Horace Bushnell

The nobles charities, the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the world has seen, represents, more or less directly, the fruitfulness and creativeness of religion.

Character | Justice | Law | Learning | Religion | World |

Elizabeth Carew, Lady Carew, formerly Lady Elizabeth Bryan

The fairest action of our human life is scorning to revenge an injury; for who forgives without a further strife, his adversary’s heart to him doth tie: and ‘tis a firmer conquest, truly said, to win the heart than overthrow the head.

Action | Character | Conquest | Heart | Life | Life | Revenge |

William Ellery Channing

Contempt of all outward things that come in competition with duty fulfills the ideal of human greatness. It is sanctioned by conscience, that universal and eternal lawgiver, whose chief principle is, that everything must be yielded up for right.

Character | Competition | Conscience | Contempt | Duty | Eternal | Greatness | Right |