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

Pierre Cornielle

To win without risk is to triumph without glory. [When there is no peril in the fight there is no glory in the triumph.] [We triumph without glory when we conquer without danger.][To vanquish without peril is to triumph without glory.]

Character | Glory | Peril | Risk | Wisdom |

e. e. cummings, fully Edward Estlin Cummings

To be nobody-but-myself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

Battle | Character | Day | Fighting | Means | World |

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 |

Billie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan

Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.

Character |

Zane Grey Orig. name Pearl Grey

To bear up under loss; to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief; to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close; to resist disease and evil men and base instincts; to hate hate and to love love; to go on when it would seem good to die; to look up with unquenchable faith in something ever more about to be - that is what any man can do, and be great.

Anger | Bitterness | Character | Defeat | Disease | Evil | Faith | Good | Grief | Hate | Love | Man | Men | Smile | Tears | Weakness |

Francesco Guicciardini

We fight to great disadvantage when we fight with those who have nothing to lose.

Character | Nothing | Wisdom |

William James

Our belief in truth itself.. that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other, what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives.

Belief | Better | Character | Desire | Position | System | Thinking | Truth |

L. Ron Hubbard, fully Lafayette Ron Hubbard

A man who is willing to accept restriction and barriers and is not afraid of them is free. A man who does nothing but fight restrictions and barriers will usually be trapped.

Character | Man | Nothing | Will | Afraid |

Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

It is a true observation of ancient writers, that as men are apt to be cast down by adversity, so they are easily satiated with prosperity, and that joy and grief produce the same effects. For whenever men are not obliged by necessity to fight they fight from ambition, which is so powerful a passion in the human breast that however high we reach we are never satisfied.

Adversity | Ambition | Character | Grief | Joy | Men | Necessity | Observation | Passion | Prosperity |

Nachman of Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Bratslav, Nachman from Uman NULL

We cannot think two thoughts at the same time. Consequently, when negative thoughts arise, you do not need to fight them. Make an effort to think positive thoughts, and the negative thoughts will disappear.

Character | Effort | Need | Time | Will | Think |

William Penn

Men who fight about religion have no religion to fight about, since they do in the name of religion the thin which religion itself forbids. To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious. It were better to be of no church than to be bitter in any.

Better | Character | Church | Men | Religion |

Maurice Nicoll

We live in a narrow reality, partly conditioned by our form of perception and partly made by opinions that we have borrowed, to which our self-esteem is fastened. We fight for our opinions, not because we believe them but because they involve the ordinary feeling of oneself. Though we are continually being hurt owing to the narrowness of the reality in which we dwell, we blame life, and do not see the necessity of finding absolutely new standpoints. All ideas that have a transforming power change our sense of reality.

Blame | Change | Character | Esteem | Ideas | Life | Life | Necessity | Perception | Power | Reality | Self | Self-esteem | Sense |

Catherine Bowen, née Catherine Shober Drinker

The professors laugh at themselves, they laugh at life; they long ago abjured the bitch-goddess Success, and the best of them will fight for his scholastic ideals with a courage and persistence that would shame a soldier. The professor is not afraid of words like truth; in fact he is not afraid of words at all.

Courage | Ideals | Life | Life | Persistence | Shame | Success | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Words | Afraid |

Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury

If a man has a quarrelsome temper, let him alone. The world will soon find his employment. He will soon meet with some one stronger that himself, who will repay him better than you can. A man may fight duels all his life, if he is disposed to quarrel.

Better | Life | Life | Man | Temper | Will | Wisdom | World |

Sri Chinmoy, born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose

Choose a friend. He will help you. Alas, he deserts you. Choose an enemy. He will fight against you. Lo, he corrects and perfects you.

Enemy | Friend | Will | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

Some political and social activities of the Catholic Church are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole... [e.g.] the fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation [is] a serious obstacle to peace.

Birth | Church | Control | Peace | Time | Wisdom | Obstacle |

Henry Havelock Ellis

We have failed to grasp the fact that mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide.

Mankind | Suicide | Wisdom |