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

Plunge boldly into the thick of life! each lives it, not to many is it known; and seize it where you will it is interesting.

Character | Life | Life | Will |

Henry George

Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.

Action | Character | Right | Thought | Will | Wisdom |

Arland Gilbert

What a man accomplishes in a day depends upon the way in which he approaches his tasks. When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm miracles can happen. When we do our work with a dynamic conquering spirit we get things done.

Ability | Challenge | Character | Day | Dynamic | Enthusiasm | Joy | Man | Miracles | Spirit | Work |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others as by self-examination thoroughly to know our own.

Character | Nothing | Self | Will |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Time is given us that we may take care for eternity; and eternity will not be too long to regret the loss of our time if we have misspent it.

Care | Character | Eternity | Regret | Time | Will | Loss |

Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault

An education which does not cultivate the will is an education that depraves the mind.

Character | Education | Mind | Will |

Harry Emerson Fosdick

We settle things by a majority vote, and the psychological effect of doing that is to create the impression that the majority is probably right. Of course, on any fine issue the majority is sure to be wrong. Think of taking a majority vote on the best music. Jazz would win over Chopin. Or on the best novel. Many cheap scribblers would win over Tolstoy. And any day a prizefight will get a bigger crowd, larger gate receipts and wider newspaper publicity than any new revelation of goodness, truth or beauty could hope to achieve in a century.

Beauty | Character | Day | Hope | Impression | Majority | Music | Revelation | Right | Truth | Will | Wrong | Beauty | Think |

John Flavel

They that know God will be humble; they that know themselves cannot be proud.

Character | God | Will | God |

Clarence Francis

I sincerely believe that the word "relationships" is the key to the prospect of a decent world. It seems abundantly clear that every problem you will have - in your family, in your work, in our nation, or in this world - is essentially a matter of relationships, of interdependence.

Character | Family | Will | Work | World |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

What can be the aim of withholding from children, or let us say from young people, this information about the sexual life of human beings? Is it a fear of arousing interest in such matters prematurely, before it spontaneously stirs in them? Is it a hope of retarding by concealment of this kind the development of the sexual instinct in general, until such time as it can find its way into the only channels open to it in the civilized social order? Is it supposed that children would show no interest or understanding for the facts and riddles of sexual life if they were not prompted to do so by outside influence? Is it regarded as possible that the knowledge withheld from them will not reach them in other ways? Or is it genuinely and seriously intended that later on they should consider everything connected with sex as something despicable and abhorrent from which their parents and teachers wish to keep them apart as long as possible? I am really at a loss so say which of these can be the motive for the customary concealment from children of everything connected with sex. I only know that these arguments are one and all equally foolish, and that I find it difficult to pay them the compliment of serious refutation.

Character | Children | Concealment | Fear | Hope | Influence | Instinct | Knowledge | Life | Life | Order | Parents | People | Time | Understanding | Will | Loss |

T. L. Fine, fully Terrence L. Fine

Too keen an eye for pattern will find it anywhere.

Character | Will |

Henry Ford

You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.

Character | Men | Will | World | Think |

Benjamin Franklin

Be sober and temperate and you will be healthy.

Character | Will |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The educability of a young person as a rule comes to an end when sexual desire breaks out in its final strength. Educators know this and act accordingly; but perhaps they will yet allow themselves to be influenced by the results of psycho-analysis so that they will transfer the main emphasis in education to the earliest years of childhood, from the suckling period onward. The little human being is frequently a finished product in his fourth or fifth year, and only gradually reveals in later years what lies buried in him.

Character | Childhood | Desire | Education | Little | Rule | Strength | Will |

Vardis Fisher, fully Vardis Alvero Fisher

Do people love truth? On the contrary, mankind has employed its subtlest ingenuity and intelligence in efforts to evade or conceal it... Do human beings love justice? The sordid travesties in our courts year after year suggest that they love justice only for themselves. Do they love peace? Can anyone seriously ask the question? Do they love freedom? Only for those who share their views. Love of peace, freedom, justice, truth - this is a myth that has been created by the folk mind, and if the artist does not look behind the myth to the reality, he will indeed wander amid the phantoms which he creates.

Character | Freedom | Ingenuity | Intelligence | Justice | Love | Mankind | Mind | Myth | Peace | People | Question | Reality | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Ingenuity |

Edgar Z. Friedenberg

In a world as empirical as ours, a youngster who does not know what he is good at will not be sure what he is good for.

Character | Good | Will | Wisdom | World |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute. What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Begin it and the work will be completed.

Character | Will | Work |