Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Amusements

"Graceful, particularly in youth, is the tear of sympathy, and the heart that melts at the tale of woe; we should not permit ease and indulgence to contract our affections, and wrap us up in selfish enjoyment. But we should accustom ourselves to think of the distresses of human life, of the solitary cottage, the dying parent, and the weeping orphan. Nor ought we ever to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty." - Hugh Blair

"The greatest business of a man is to improve his mind and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements." - Pliny the Younger, full name Casus Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo NULL

"I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business." - Benjamin Franklin

"Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life." - Adam Smith

"Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities." - Aristotle NULL

"Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements, but in virtuous activities." - Aristotle NULL

"To find recreation in amusements is not happiness; for this joy springs from alien and extrinsic sources, and is therefore dependent upon and subject to interruption by a thousand accidents, which may minister inevitable affliction." - Blaise Pascal

"Although there is nothing so bad for conscience as trifling, there is nothing so good for conscience as trifles. Its certain discipline and development are related to the smallest things. Conscience, like gravitation, takes hold of atoms. Nothing is morally indifferent. Conscience must reign in manners as well as morals, in amusements as well as work. He only who is “faithful in that which is least” is dependable in all the world." - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock

"It was a shrewd saying, whoever said it, "That the man who first brought ruin on the Roman people was he who pampered them by largesses and amusements."" - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

"Although there is nothing so bad for conscience as trifling, there is nothing so good for conscience as trifles. Its certain discipline and development are related to the smallest things. Conscience, like gravitation, takes hold of atoms. Nothing is morally indifferent. Conscience must reign in manners as well as morals, in amusements as well as work. He only who is "faithful in that which is least" is dependable in all the world." - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock

"Society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"My heart is so tired" - Rudyard Kipling

"One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Ill-luck, is, in nine cases out of ten, the result of saying pleasure first and duty second, instead of duty first and pleasure second." - Theodore T. Munger

"Let us work without theorizing, ‘tis the only way to make life endurable." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"You must have the devil in you to succeed in any of the arts." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL