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

Arthur Aughey

The ability to find fault is believed, by some people, to be a sure sign of great wisdom, when, in most cases, it only indicates narrowness of mind and ill nature.

Ability | Character | Fault | Mind | Nature | People | Wisdom | Fault |

Charles Pierre Baudelaire

As a remedy against all ills - poverty, sickness, and melancholy - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work.

Character | Melancholy | Poverty | Work |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

The one thing worth living for is to keep one's soul pure.

Character | Soul | Wisdom | Worth |

Abaye NULL

Speak not one thing with the mouth and another with the heart.

Character | Heart |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Once thing here is worth a great deal, to pass thy life in truth and justice, with a benevolent disposition even to liars and unjust men.

Character | Justice | Life | Life | Men | Truth | Worth |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and a vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.

Body | Character | Fame | Fortune | Judgment | Life | Life | Oblivion | Perception | Soul | Time |

Simeon ben Azai, sometimes Ben Azai

The reward of doing one duty is the power to do another.

Character | Duty | Power | Reward |

Michael Barenbaum

Envy destroys peace of mind and happiness. An envious person’s life is full of suffering and resentment. He is never happy with what he himself has.

Character | Envy | Happy | Life | Life | Mind | Peace | Resentment | Suffering |

Hugh Blair

That discipline which corrects the eagerness of worldly passions, which fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, which enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes to it matter of enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity than all the provisions which we can make of the goods of fortune.

Character | Discipline | Enjoyment | Fortune | Heart | Knowledge | Mind | Principles |

William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall

You need more tact in the dangerous art of giving than in any other social action.

Action | Art | Character | Giving | Need | Tact | Art |

Barbara Brennan

The meaning of life is experienced when we are in touch with our unique essence, sometimes called the divine spark within... It is both individual and universal. When we are fully aware of this unique inner radiance, we feel what it is to be utterly alive. We experience unconditional love. We sense complete safety because that spark also connects us to the universal divinity within all things.

Character | Divinity | Experience | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Sense | Unique |

Norman O. Brown, fully Norman Oliver Brown

What education does is to put a series of filters over your awareness so that year by year... you experience less and less.

Awareness | Character | Education | Experience | Awareness |

Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Art | Cause | Character | Difficulty | Good | Men | Mistake | Thinking | Virtue | Virtue | Art |

Arthur Brisbane

Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains.

Character | Good | Power | Regret | Time |

Gerald Baldwin Brown

Temperament we are born with, character we have to make; and that not in the grand moments... but in the daily, quiet paths of pilgrimage.

Character | Quiet |

Hugh Blair

Dissimulation in youth is the forerunner of perfidy in old age; its first appearance is the fatal omen of growing depravity and future shame. It degrades parts and learning obscures the luster of every accomplishment and sinks us into contempt. The path of falsehood is a perplexing maze. After the first departure from sincerity, it is not in our power to stop; one artifice unavoidably leads on to another, till, as the intricacy of the labyrinth increases, we are left entangled in our snare.

Accomplishment | Age | Appearance | Artifice | Character | Contempt | Falsehood | Future | Learning | Old age | Perfidy | Power | Shame | Sincerity | Youth | Youth | Old |