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

R. H. Blyth, fully Reginald Horace Blyth

We walk, and our religion is shown (even in the dullest and most insensitive person) in how we walk. Or to put it more accurately, living in this world means choosing, choosing to walk, and the way we choose to walk is infallibly and perfectly expressed in the walk itself. Nothing can disguise it. The walk of an ordinary man and of an enlightened man are as different as that of a snake and a giraffe.

Character | Disguise | Man | Means | Nothing | Religion | World |

Gamaliel Bradford

There is no means by which men so powerfully elude their ignorance, disguise it from themselves and from others as by words.

Disguise | Ignorance | Means | Men | Wisdom | Words |

Benjamin Franklin

There is perhaps no one of the natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself.

Disguise | Pride | Struggle | Will |

Alfred Edward Taylor

In Nature we best see God under a disguise so heavy that it allows us to discern little more than that someone is there; within our own moral life we see Him with the mask, so to say, half fallen off.

Disguise | God | Life | Life | Little | Nature | God |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

We are so much accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that at length we disguise ourselves to ourselves.

Disguise |

Frank Tyger

Opportunity's favorite disguise is trouble.

Disguise | Opportunity |

Richard Barnet, fully Richard Jackson Barnet

The celebration of duty is an effective way to disguise the lust for power from oneself as much as from the outside world.

Disguise | Duty | Lust | Power | World |

Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

If you understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely.

Age | Disguise | People | Understand |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

They only employ words to disguise their thoughts.

Disguise | Words |

John Locke

Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.

Deeds | Disguise | Need | People | Time | Deeds |

John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"

When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself. To hold otherwise — to deny the political character of the modern corporation — is not merely to avoid the reality. It is to disguise the reality. The victims of that disguise are those we instruct in error. The beneficiaries are the institutions whose power we so disguise. Let there be no question: economics, so long as it is thus taught, becomes, however unconsciously, a part of the arrangement by which the citizen or student is kept from seeing how he or she is, or will be, governed.

Character | Disguise | Power | Will |

Joseph Sugarman

Not many people are willing to give failure a second opportunity. They fail once and it's all over. The bitter pill of failure is often more than most people can handle. If you're willing to accept failure and learn from it, if you're willing to consider failure as a blessing in disguise and bounce back, you've got the potential of harnessing one of the most powerful success forces.

Disguise | Failure | People | Success | Failure | Learn |

Michael S. Josephson

It’s a sign of troubled times when the concept of “pressure” becomes an acceptable excuse for ethical shortcuts and moral shortcomings. Pressures are just temptations in disguise and it’s never been acceptable to give in to temptation. Ethics is about the way things ought to be, not about the way things are. When it comes to ethics, motive is very important. A person of character does the right thing for the right reason. Compliance is about what we must do; ethics is about what we should do. Ethical people often do more than the law requires and less than it allows. The area of discretion between the legal “must” and the moral “should” tests our character. Noble talk and framed ethics statements are no substitute for principled conduct. The test is doing the right thing.

Character | Compliance | Discretion | Disguise | Ethics | Law | People | Right |

Nikola Tesla

From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering, but to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement. The pressure of occupation and the incessant stream of impressions pouring into our consciousness through all the gateways of knowledge make modern existence hazardous in many ways. Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves. The premature death of millions is primarily traceable to this cause. Even among those who exercise care, it is a common mistake to avoid imaginary, and ignore the real dangers. And what is true of an individual also applies, more or less, to a people as a whole.

Attention | Childhood | Consciousness | Contemplation | Death | Disguise | Existence | Individual | Knowledge | Means | Mistake | Occupation | People | Present | World | Contemplation | Value |

Oswald Spengler, fully Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler

To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery (the media) that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed.

Detachment | Disguise | Freedom | Sense |

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume.

Beauty | Disguise | Nature | Spirit | Will | Beauty |