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

Joseph Brant, aka Thayendanegea

In the government you called civilized, the happiness of the people is constantly sacrificed to the splendor of the empire. Hence the origin of your codes of criminal and civil laws; hence your dungeons and prisons. We have no prisons; we have no written laws; and yet judges are as highly revered among us as they are among you, and their decisions are as much regarded. We have among us no exalted villains above the control of our laws. Daring wickedness is here never allowed to triumph over helpless innocence. The estates of widows and orphans are never devoured by enterprising swindlers. We have no robbery under the pretext of law.

Character | Control | Daring | Government | Innocence | Law | People | Wickedness | Government | Happiness |

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 |

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

Happiness follows sorrow, sorrow follows happiness, but when one no longer discriminates between happiness and sorrow, a good deed and a bad deed, one is able to realize freedom.

Character | Freedom | Good | Sorrow | Happiness |

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

If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.

Character | Man | Thought | Happiness |

Richard Maurice Bucke, often called Maurice Bucke

The Cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, the soul of man is immortal... the universe is so built and ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all... the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one is in the long run absolutely certain.

Character | Good | Love | Man | Soul | Universe | Work | World | Happiness |

Maurice Chevalier, fully Maurice Auguste Chevalier

If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved.

Character | Safe | Will | Happiness |

Andrew Carnegie

The secret of happiness is renunciation.

Character | Wisdom | Happiness |

François Ignace Dunod De Charnage

Let us pity the wicked man; for it is very sad to seek happiness where it does not exist. Let our compassion express itself in efforts to bring him gently back to sacred principle, and if he persist, let us pity him the more for a blindness so fatal to himself.

Character | Compassion | Man | Pity | Sacred | Happiness |

Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz

Physical pleasures can give a person pleasure and happiness to some degree, but this cannot compete with the elevated pleasure that one can derive when one toils in wisdom.

Character | Pleasure | Wisdom | Happiness |

William Newton Clarke

We communicate happiness to others not often by great acts of devotion and self-sacrifice, but by the absence of fault-finding and censure, by being ready to sympathize with their notions and feelings, instead of forcing them to sympathize with ours.

Absence | Censure | Character | Devotion | Fault | Feelings | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Happiness |

George Barrell Cheever

As character to be used for eternity must be formed in time and in good time, so good habits to be used for happiness in this life must be formed early; and then they will be a treasure to be desired in the house of the wise, and an oil of life in their dwellings.

Character | Eternity | Good | Life | Life | Time | Will | Wise | Happiness |

Edward Watke, Jr.

The very nearest approach to domestic happiness on earth is in the cultivation on both sides of absolute unselfishness. Never both be angry at once. Never talk at one another, either alone or in company. Never speak loud to one another unless the house is on fire. Let each; one strive to yield oftenest to the wishes of the other. Let self-denial be the daily aim and practice of each. Never find fault unless it is perfectly certain that a fault has been committed, and always speak lovingly. Never taunt with a past mistake. Neglect the whole world besides rather than one another. Never allow a request to be repeated. Never make a remark at the expense of each other, it is a meanness. Never part for a day without loving words to think of during absence. Never meet without a loving welcome. Never let the sun go down upon any anger or grievance. Never let any fault you have committed go by until you have frankly confessed it and asked forgiveness. Never forget the happy hours of early love. Never sigh over what might have been, but make the best of what is. Never forget that marriage is ordained of God, and that His blessing alone can make it what it should ever be. Never be contented till you know you are both walking in the narrow way. Never let your hopes stop short of the eternal home.

Absence | Absolute | Anger | Character | Cultivation | Day | Earth | Eternal | Fault | Forgiveness | God | Happy | Love | Marriage | Meanness | Mistake | Neglect | Past | Practice | Self | Self-denial | Wishes | Words | World | Fault | Happiness | Think |

Jeremy Collier

Envy is an ill-natured vice, and is made up of meanness and malice. It wishes the force of goodness to be strained, and the measure of happiness abated. It laments over prosperity, and sickens at the sight of health. It oftentimes wants spirit as well as good nature.

Character | Envy | Force | Good nature | Good | Health | Malice | Meanness | Nature | Prosperity | Spirit | Wants | Wishes | Happiness |

Carrie Chapman Catt

Service to a just cause rewards the worker with more real happiness and satisfaction than any other venture of life.

Cause | Character | Life | Life | Service | Wisdom | Happiness |

Albert Einstein

Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig.

Absolute | Aims | Character | Happiness |