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

Nathaniel Emmons

It is a very serious duty, perhaps of all duties the most serious, to look into one's own character and conduct, and accurately read one's own heart. It is virtually looking into eternity, and all its vast and solemn realities, which must appear delightful or awful, according as the heart appears to be conformed or not conform to God.

Character | Conduct | Duty | Eternity | God | Heart | Wisdom |

Norman Douglas, aka George Norman Douglas

You can construct the character of a man and his age not only from what he does and says, but from what he fails to say and do.

Age | Character | Man | Wisdom |

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Never expect women to be sincere so long as they are educated to think that their first aim in life is to please.

Life | Life | Wisdom | Think |

Thomas Dreier

A greater poverty than that caused by lack of money is the poverty of unawareness. Man and women go about the world unaware of the beauty, the goodness, the glories in it. Their souls are poor. It is better to have a poor pocket-book than to suffer from a poor soul.

Beauty | Better | Man | Money | Poverty | Soul | Wisdom | World |

Alexis Dupuy

Men marry to make an end; women to make a beginning.

Beginning | Men | Wisdom |

Nathaniel Emmons

I could never think well of a man’s intellectual or moral character if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments.

Character | Man | Wisdom | Think |

Joseph Farrell, fully Joseph Patrick Farrell

When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own; and this is especially the case with those persons whose knowledge of the world is of such sort that it results in extreme distrust of men.

Character | Distrust | Extreme | Knowledge | Man | Men | Reading | Wisdom | World |

Michel Foucault

I believe that the political significance of the problem of sex is due to the fact that sex is located at the point of intersection of the discipline of the body and the control of the population.

Body | Control | Discipline | Wisdom |

Environment Pollution Panel NULL

The pervasive nature of pollution, its disregard of political boundaries including state lines, the national character of the technical, economic and political problems involved, and the recognized Federal responsibilities for administering vast public lands which can be changed by pollution, for carrying out large enterprises which can produce pollutants, for preserving and improving the nation’s natural resources, all make it mandatory that the Federal Government assume leadership and exert its influence in pollution abatement on a national scale.

Character | Government | Influence | Nature | Problems | Public | Wisdom | Government | Leadership |

Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.

Religious faith is not a storm cellar to which men and women can flee for refuge from the storms of life. It is, instead, an inner spiritual strength which enables them to face those storms with hope and serenity. Religious faith has the miraculous power to lift ordinary human beings to greatness in seasons of stress.

Faith | Greatness | Hope | Life | Life | Men | Power | Serenity | Strength | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.

Character | Man | Nothing | Wisdom |

Betty Friedan

If divorce has increased by one thousand percent, don’t blame the women’s movement. Blame the obsolete sex roles on which our marriages were based.

Blame | Wisdom |

John Hall

Keep clear of personalities in conversation. Talk of things, objects, thoughts. The smallest minds occupy themselves with persons. Do not needlessly report ill of others. As far as possible, dwell on the good side of human beings. There are family boards where a constant process of depreciating, assigning motives, and cutting up character goes forward. They are not pleasant places. One who is healthy does not wish to dine at a dissecting table. There is evil enough in man, God knows. But it is not the mission of every young man and woman to detail and report it all. Keep the atmosphere as pure as possible, and fragrant with gentleness and charity.

Character | Charity | Conversation | Enough | Evil | Family | Gentleness | God | Good | Man | Mission | Motives | Wisdom | Woman | God |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The society of women is the element of good manners.

Good | Manners | Society | Wisdom | Society |

Josiah Johnson "J." Hawes

A good character is, in all cases, the fruit of personal exertion. It is not inherited from parents; it is not created by external advantages; it is no necessary appendage of birth; wealth, talents, or station; but it is the results of one's good principles manifested in a course of virtuous and honorable action.

Action | Birth | Character | Good | Parents | Principles | Wealth | Wisdom |

Suzanne Gordon

Somehow feminists who want to transform our culture, not just adapt to it, have to convince young women that embracing feminism does not mean embracing victimhood, that you can be for others and still be for yourself, that you can “make it” in bed and in the marketplace, that women can indeed be visible without subjugating their souls behind traditional female - or male - masks.

Culture | Wisdom |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming"! That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world... The belief in the freedom of the will is inconsistent with the truth of evolution. Modern philosophy shows clearly that the will is never really free in man or animal, but determined by the organization of the brain; and that in turn acquires its individual character by the laws of heredity and the influence of environment.

Belief | Change | Character | Evolution | Existence | Freedom | Heredity | Individual | Influence | Lesson | Man | Nothing | Organization | Philosophy | Truth | Will | Wisdom | World |

Rowland Hill

Life is but one continual course of instruction. The hand of the parent writes on the heart of the child the first faint character which time deepens into strength so that nothing can efface them.

Character | Heart | Life | Life | Nothing | Strength | Time | Wisdom | Child | Parent |