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 M. Pirsig

So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.

Character | Mind | Peace | Reflection | Right | Self | Serenity | Will | Work |

Robert M. Pirsig

Programmes of a political nature are important and products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outside from there.

Character | Heart | Important | Individual | Nature | Right | Work | World |

Alexander Pope

There needs but thinking right and meaning well.

Character | Meaning | Right | Thinking |

Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL

Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart of life, and is prophetic of eternal good.

Character | Duty | Eternal | Good | Grace | Heart | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Right | Soul | Truth |

William Swan Plumer

Be patient in little things. Learn to bear the every-day trials and annoyances of life quietly and calmly, and then, when unforeseen trouble or calamity comes, your strength will not forsake you. There is much difference between genuine patience and sullen endurance, as between the smile of love, and the malicious gnashing of the teeth.

Calamity | Character | Day | Endurance | Life | Life | Little | Love | Patience | Smile | Strength | Trials | Will | Calamity | Trouble | Learn |

Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Norris

The People have the right to the Truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is not right that they be exploited and deceived with false views of life, false characters, false sentiment, false morality, false history, false philosophy, false emotions, false heroism, false notions of self-sacrifice, false views of religion , of duty, of conduct and manners.

Character | Conduct | Duty | Emotions | History | Liberty | Life | Life | Manners | Morality | People | Philosophy | Religion | Right | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Sentiment | Truth |

Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL

Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.

Character | Duty | Eternal | Good | Grace | Heart | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Right | Soul | Truth |

Plotinus NULL

It is not by running hither and thither outside of itself that the soul understands morality and right conduct: it learns them of its own nature, in its contact with itself, in its intellectual grasp of itself, seeing deeply impressed upon it the images of its primal state.

Character | Conduct | Morality | Nature | Right | Soul |

Leo Rosten, fully Leo Calvin Rosten, pen name Leonard Q. Ross

The purpose of life is not to be happy - but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

Character | Happy | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to save it.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Order | Right | Risk |

Moshe Rosenstein, fully Moshe ben Chaim Rosenstein

What is the difference between mourning and sadness? Mourning takes hold of one’s heart, but not one’s mind, while sadness takes hold of the mind. Mourning leads to thinking, while sadness stops one’s thoughts. Mourning stems from the light in one’s soul, while sadness comes from the darkness of the soul. Mourning arouses one to life, while sadness brings to the opposite. The Torah obligates mourning when it is appropriate, while it forbids sadness and commands we serve the Almighty with joy.

Character | Darkness | Heart | Joy | Life | Life | Light | Mind | Mourning | Sadness | Soul | Thinking | Torah |

W. D. Ross, fully Sir William David Ross

No act is ever, in virtue of falling under some general description, necessarily actually right... moral acts often (as every one knows) and indeed always (on reflection we must admit) have different characteristics that tend to make them a the same time prima facie right and prima facie wrong; there is probably no act, for instance, which does good to anyone without doing harm to someone else, and vice versa.

Character | Good | Harm | Reflection | Right | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wrong | Vice |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

Character | Duty | Gratitude | Right |

Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

Freedom does not mean the right to do whatever we please, but rather to do whatever we ought... The right to do whatever we please reduces freedom to a physical power and forgets that freedom is a moral power.

Character | Freedom | Power | Right |