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

Tyron Edwards

Firmness in adherence to truth and duty is generally most decided when most intelligent and conscientious, and is sometimes mistaken for obstinacy by those who do not comprehend its nature and motive.

Character | Duty | Firmness | Nature | Truth |

Euripedes NULL

Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.

Character | Man | Wisdom |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

Character | Duty | Power | Reward |

Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux

If you are willing to forget that there is an element of duty in love and of love in duty, then it's easy to choose between the two.

Character | Duty | Love |

Gustavo Gutiérrez

God’s love is the reason for our creation, a free, gratuitous love, a love without limits... Our duty is to translate this love into acts of solidarity and commitment.

Character | Commitment | Duty | God | Love | Reason |

Edwin Paxton Hood

Be as careful of the books you read as the company you keep. Your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as the latter.

Books | Character | Will |

Samson Raphael Hirsch

In the highest selflessness lies the greatest power. Ultimately, neglect of duty is due to selfishness. Because of selfishness we omit the good and commit the bad. Selfishness makes us shrink from the fulfillment of our life-task. The humble person with integrity has no trace of selfishness, his self-sacrifice is not obstructed by egotism. He is always ready to use the last spark of his energy and the last fiber of his being in doing good. He feels he has been granted life only to use his every breath for the energetic fulfillment of the good. His entire sojourn on earth, regardless of the length of its duration, is true living. When he has departed from the world, one may say of him: He was alive.

Character | Duty | Earth | Energy | Fulfillment | Good | Integrity | Life | Life | Neglect | Power | Sacrifice | Self | Selfishness | Self-sacrifice | World |

Samuel Holdheim

It is only the attainment of the higher level of inner religious life which justifies an abandonment of our religious forms, that on a lower level are both a duty and a necessity.

Attainment | Character | Duty | Life | Life | Necessity |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

It is our daily duty to consider that in all circumstances of life, pleasurable, painful, or otherwise, the conduct of every human being affects, more or less, the happiness of others, especially of those in the same house; and that, as life is made up, for the most part, not of great occasions, but of small everyday moments, it is the giving to those moments their greatest amount of peace, pleasantness, and security, that contributes most to the sum of human good. Be peaceable. Be cheerful. Be true.

Character | Circumstances | Conduct | Duty | Giving | Good | Life | Life | Peace | Security | Happiness |

Kuzari or The Kitab al Khazari written by Rabbi Yehuda Halevi NULL

One’s pleasure is enhanced by the duty of saying blessings over everything he enjoys or that happens to him.

Blessings | Character | Duty | Pleasure |

James Russell Lowell

A man's mind is known by the company it keeps.

Character | Man | Mind |

John Lubbock, fully Sir John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

The world would be both better and brighter if we would dwell on the duty of happiness, as well as on the happiness of duty.

Better | Character | Duty | World | Happiness |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Obstinacy is the strength of the weak. Firmness founded upon principle, upon the truth and right, order and law, duty and generosity, is the obstinacy of sages.

Character | Duty | Firmness | Generosity | Law | Order | Right | Strength | Truth |

J. Russell Lynes

Great things often come from where despair reigns. The performance of duty still determines man's destiny.

Character | Despair | Destiny | Duty | Man |