Great Throughts Treasury

"One man does not see everything." - Euripedes NULL

"Silence is an answer to a wise man." - Euripedes NULL

"That man is happiest who lives from day to day and asks no more, garnering the simple goodness of a life." - Euripedes NULL

"The man who knows when not to act is wise. To my mind, bravery is forethought." - Euripedes NULL

"What proud man is not odious?" - Euripedes NULL

"The great scientific discoveries of the past hundred years have been as child's play compared with the titanic forces that will be released when man applies himself to the understanding and mastery of his own nature." - Melvin James Evans

"Our double dealing generally comes down upon ourselves. To speak or act a lie is alike contemptible in the sight of God and man." -

"A man knows how to mix pleasures with business, is never entirely possessed by them; he either quits or resumes them at his will; and in the use he makes of them he rather finds a relaxation of mind than a dangerous charm that might corrupt him." - Charles de Saint-Évremond, fully Charles Marguetel de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Évremond

"Man can never escape the ideal or absolute; he can merely exchange one absolute for another. He can ignore anything beyond his needs only by making an ideal out of the fulfillment of his needs themselves. In short, man cannot be an animal; he can only be a philosopher or anthropologist who asserts that men are animals and ought to live like them. It is not necessary to point out that this is just to set up another absolute." - Emil Fackenheim, fully Emil Ludwig Fackenheim

"The best advice I can give to any young man or young woman upon graduation from school can be summed up in exactly eight words, and they are - be honest with yourself and tell the truth." - James A. Farley

"When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own." - James T. Farrell, fully James Thomas Farrell

"Only the man who can impose discipline on himself is fit to discipline others or can impose discipline on others." - William Feather

"Unless a man has been kicked around a little, you can't really depend upon him to amount to anything." - William Feather

"Every man should study conciseness in speaking; it is a sing of ignorance not to know that long speeches, though they may please the speaker, are the torture of the hearer." - Owen Feltham

"Fear, if it be not immoderate, puts a guard about us that does watch and defend us; but credulity keeps us naked, and lays us open to all the sly assaults of ill-intending men: it was a virtue when man was in his innocence; but since his fall, it abuses those that own it." - Owen Feltham

"He that always waits upon God is ready whenever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts even; he is a happy man who so lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die." - Owen Feltham

"I love the man that is modestly valiant; that stirs not till he most needs, and then to purpose. A continued patience I commend not." - Owen Feltham

"No man can expect to find a friend without faults; nor can he propose himself to be so to another. Without reciprocal mildness and temperance there can be no continuance of friendship. Every man will have something to do for his friend, and something to bear with in him. The sober man only can do the first; and for the latter, patience is requisite. It is better for a man to depend on himself than to be annoyed with either a madman or a fool." - Owen Feltham

"Pleasures can undo a man at any time, if yielded to." - Owen Feltham

"Praise has different effects, according to the mind it meets with; it makes a wise man modest, but a fool more arrogant, turning his weak brain giddy." - Owen Feltham

"There is no detraction worse than to over-praise a man, for if his worth proves short of what report doth speak of him, his own actions are ever giving the lie of his honor." - Owen Feltham

"There is no man but for his own interest hath an obligation to be honest. There may; be sometimes temptations to be otherwise; but, all cares cast up, he shall find it the greatest ease, the highest profit, the best pleasure, the most safety, and the noblest fame, to hold the horns of this altar, which in all assays, can in himself protect him." - Owen Feltham

"What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can reject or accept as we wish; it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it. A person indolent by nature or dulled and distorted by mental servitude, learned luxury, and vanity will never raise himself to the level of idealism." - J. G. Fichte, fully Johann Gottlieb Fichte

"A tender-hearted and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is, even for its own sake, incapable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of mind the most amiable; and though it seldom receives much honor, is worthy of the highest." - Henry Fielding

"As a great part of the uneasiness of matrimony arises from mere trifles, it would be wise in every young married man to enter into an agreement with his wife, that in all disputes of this kind the party who was most convinced they were right should always surrender the victory. By which means both would be more forward to give up the cause." - Henry Fielding

"Custom may lead a man into many errors; but it justifies none." - Henry Fielding

"Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others concerned with him have done evil! If a man has acted right, he has done well, though alone; if wrong, the sanction of all mankind will not justify him." - Henry Fielding

"There are two considerations which always embitter the heart of an avaricious man - the one is a perpetual thirst after more riches, the other the prospect of leaving what he has already acquired." - Henry Fielding

"The one and only formative power given to man is thought. By his thinking he not only makes character, but body and affairs, for "as he thinketh within himself, so is he."" - Lowell Fillmore

"Calamity is man’s true touchstone." - Joseph Fletcher, fully Joseph Francis Fletcher

"Man is his own star, and that soul that can be honest, is the only perfect man." - Joseph Fletcher, fully Joseph Francis Fletcher

"Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him." - E. M. Forster, fully Edward Morgan Forster

"On its highest level man's contemporary desire to escape responsibility expresses itself not in emphasis on luck, or in emotional submission to fate, but in a thoroughgoing deterministic theory, ascribing all personal qualities to heredity and environment." - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"The search for truth is, as it always has been, the noblest expression of the human spirit. Man's insatiable desire for knowledge about himself, about his environment and the forces by which he is surrounded, gives life its meaning and purpose, and clothes it with final dignity... And yet we know, deep in our hearts, that knowledge is not enough... Unless we can anchor our knowledge to moral purposes, the ultimate result will be dust and ashes - dust and ashes that will bury the hopes and monuments of men beyond recovery." - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Education begins with life. Before we are aware the foundations of character are laid, and subsequent teaching avails but little to remove or alter them... If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin

"In dealings between man and man, truth, sincerity and integrity are of the utmost importance to the felicity of life." - Benjamin Franklin

"Man only from himself can suffer wrong." - Benjamin Franklin

"The most acceptable service of God is doing good to man." - Benjamin Franklin

"There is much difference between imitating a good man, and counterfeiting him." - Benjamin Franklin

"There was never yet a truly great man that was not able at the same time to be truly virtuous." - Benjamin Franklin

"Virtue alone is sufficient to make a man great, glorious, and happy." - Benjamin Franklin

"When you speak to a man, look on his eyes; when he speaks to you, look on his mouth." - Benjamin Franklin

"Through himself alone can man be redeemed - through himself and in himself." - Karl Emil Franzos

"It seems not to be true that there is a power in the universe, which watches over the well-being of every individual with parental care and brings all his concerns to a happy ending. On the contrary, the destinies of man are incompatible with a universal principle of benevolence or with - what is to some degree contradictory - a universal principle of justice... Dark, unfeeling, and unloving powers determine human destiny; the system of rewards and punishments, which according to religion, governs the world, seems to have no existence." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead." -

"Good is all that serves life, evil is all that serves death. Good is reverence for life...and all that enhances life. Evil is all that stifles life, narrows it down, cuts it to pieces... Dostoevsky said, "If there is no God, then anything is possible." I would say that if there is no love, nothing is possible. Man absolutely cannot live by himself... Uniformity and freedom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible." -

"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality." -

"Of all the animals on earth, man has shown himself to be the most cruel and brutal. He is the only animal that will create instruments of death for his own destruction. Man is the only animal on all the earth that has ever been known to burn its young as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of some imaginary deity. He is the only one that will build homes, towns, and cities at such a cost in sacrifice and suffering and turn around and destroy them in war." - James William Fulbright

"By benevolence man rises to a height where he meets God. Therefore do a good deed before you begin your prayers." - Achai Gaon, known as Ahai of Sabha or Aha of Sabha

"Only what man achieves through effort is dear to him." - Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman, known as the Vilna Gaon or Elijah of Vilna or by his Hebrew acronym Gra ("Gaon Rabbenu Eliyahu")