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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable.

Character | Impatience | Men | People | Time | Unhappiness |

B. F. Harris

Show me the business man or institution not guided by the sentiment and service; by the idea that "he profits most who serves best" and I will show you a man or an outfit that is dead and dying.

Business | Character | Man | Sentiment | Service | Will | Business |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

Character | Government | Honor | People |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

Govern your passions or otherwise they will govern you.

Character | Will | Govern |

Sarah Grand, pseudonymn of Frances Elizabeth Bellenden Clarke McFall

Our opinion of people depends less upon what we see in them than in what they make us see in ourselves.

Character | Opinion | People |

Charles Montagu Halifax, 1st Earl of Halifax, Lord Halifax

He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things.

Chance | Character | Nothing | Will |

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 |

Rabbi Chayim Meir Hagar

A person who is sincerely humble will be constantly happy. A humble person realizes that nothing is owed him, and therefore feels satisfied with what he has. He does not raise his sights to receive what is above him. He constantly has peace of mind and always feels the joy of life.

Character | Happy | Joy | Life | Life | Mind | Nothing | Peace | Receive | Will |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, yet both actively working together.

Character | Difficulty | People |

John Hay, fully John Milton Hay

They [trees] hang on from a past no theory can recover. They will survive us. The air makes their music. Otherwise, they live in savage silence, though mites and nematodes and spiders teem at their roots, and though the energy with which they feed on the sun and are able to draw water sometimes hundred of feet up their trunks and into their twigs and branches calls for a deafening volume of sound.

Character | Energy | Music | Past | Silence | Sound | Will |

Lynn Hill, aka Lynn Hill-Raffa

The purpose of my existence as I climb is to adapt my personal dimensions to the environment around me at each moment. I become an active player sharing some of the responsibility for my own destiny, achieving a heightened sense of awareness and seeing the direct result of my efforts; either I fall or I reach the top. But the meaning does not come from conquering the rock. Purpose comes from moving in harmony with nature, rather than destroying it or altering it for my immediate satisfaction. What gives life meaning is the fulfillment of directing energy in a way that brings a higher order to, and harmony with, the environment I live in... The ultimate meaning of our lives is relative to how much we have given to others. The ultimate meaning of our lives is connected with death... I would like to know that I have inspired people to go beyond self-limiting stereotypes to experience and nurture the true richness of their passions.

Awareness | Character | Death | Destiny | Energy | Existence | Experience | Fulfillment | Harmony | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Self | Sense | Awareness |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Most people think dramatically, not quantitatively.

Character | People | Think |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What is uttered from the heart alone will win the hearts of others to your own.

Character | Heart | Will |

Ellen Goodman

It is one thing when business is interested in young people as students. Quite another when they are interested in students as consumers. It is one thing when the marketplace supports the schools. Quite another when the schools become a marketplace.

Business | Character | People | Business |

John P. Grier

Prejudices are the principles of people we dislike.

Character | People | Principles |

Robert Hall

Infidelity and faith look both through the perspective glass, but at contrary ends. Infidelity looks through the wrong end of the glass; and, therefore, sees those objects near which are afar off, and makes great things little - diminishing the greatest spiritual blessings, and removing far from us threatened evils. Faith looks at the right end, and brings the blessings that are far off in time close to our eye, and multiplies God’s mercies, which, in a distance, lost their greatness.

Blessings | Character | Ends | Faith | God | Greatness | Little | Looks | Right | Time | Wrong | Infidelity |

Francis Bret Harte

Never a tear bedims the eye that time and patience will not dry.

Character | Patience | Time | Will |

Heinrich Heine

Whether a revolution succeeds or miscarries, men of great hearts will always be its victims.

Character | Men | Revolution | Will |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities. No wonder then, that in this prudent country most people are so shy of praising anything.

Character | People | Wonder |