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

Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

No man succeeds in everything he undertakes. In that sense we are all failures. The great point is not to fail in ordering and sustaining the effort of our life.

Character | Effort | Life | Life | Man | Sense |

Richard Cecil

Hypocrisy is folly. It is much easier, safer, and pleasanter to be the thing which a man aims to appear, than to keep up the appearance of what he is not.

Aims | Appearance | Character | Folly | Hypocrisy | Man |

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

Every one in his own house and God in all of them.

Character | God | God |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

Character | Man |

W. G. Cole

The wise man loves to believe nothing; the simple man to believe all things. The latter is credulous to others, the former to himself.

Character | Man | Nothing | Wisdom | Wise |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

The child’s grief throbs against the round of its little heart as heavily as the man’s sorrow; and the one finds as much delight in his kite or drum as the other in striking the springs of enterprise or soaring on the wings of fame.

Character | Fame | Grief | Heart | Little | Man | Sorrow |

William Congreve

You read of but one wise man; and all that he knew was - that he knew nothing.

Character | Man | Nothing | Wise |

Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, fully Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, conte di Cavour

The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them.

Character | Man | Men | Will |

Sri Chinmoy, born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose

The meaning of life is to become inseparably one with God the transcendental Bliss and God the universal Peace. The meaning of life is to achieve unconditional self-giving and a self-giving will... complete faith in oneself and a birthless and deathless faith in God. Life is love... Life needs a dream and a goal... Transcendence is the glorious beginning of human perfection... Who am I? I am my life’s unfinished God-manifestation.

Beginning | Character | Faith | Giving | God | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Peace | Perfection | Self | Will | God |

George Canning

Active beneficence is a virtue of easier practice than forbearance after having conferred, or than thankfulness after having received a benefit. I know not, indeed, whether it be a greater and more difficult exercise of magnanimity for the one party to act as if he had forgotten, or for the other as if he constantly remembered the obligation.

Character | Forbearance | Magnanimity | Obligation | Practice | Thankfulness | Virtue | Virtue |

René Char

Be grateful to the man who cares nothing for your remorse. You are his equal.

Character | Man | Nothing | Remorse |

Pierre Charron

The true science and study of man is man.

Character | Man | Men | Science | Study |

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

Whoever undertakes a long Journey, if he be wise, makes it his Business to find out an agreeable Companion. How cautious then should He be, who is to take a Journey for Life, whose Fellow-Traveler must not part with him but at the Grave; his Companion at Bed and Board and Sharer of all the Pleasures and Fatigues of his Journey; as the Wife must be to the Husband! She is no such Sort of Ware, that a Man can be rid of when he pleases: When once that’s purchas’d, no Exchange, no Sale, no Alienation can be made: She is an inseparable Accident to Man: Marriage is a Noose, which, fasten’d about the Neck, runs the closer, and fits more uneasy by our struggling to get loose: ‘Tis a Gordian Knot which none can unty, and being twisted with our Thread of Life, nothing but the Schyth of Death can cut it.

Accident | Alienation | Business | Character | Death | Grave | Husband | Journey | Life | Life | Man | Marriage | Nothing | Wife | Wise | Business |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon; and splendors born only of the earth eclipse the stars. So a man sometimes covers up the entire disc of eternity with a dollar and quenches transcendent glories with a little shining dust.

Character | Earth | Eternity | Little | Man |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty; but right with them and with us is one and the same thing.

Action | Angels | Character | Duty | Right |

Jeremy Collier

Every one has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.

Character |