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

James T. Shotwell

Peace is not merely a vacuum left by the ending of wars. It is the creation of two eternal principles, justice and freedom.

Eternal | Freedom | Justice | Peace | Principles | Wisdom |

Carol Adrienne

Purpose is about developing relationships. Purpose is about bringing attention and intention into the present moment, moving ahead with new ideas, giving and receiving support, volunteering, mentoring, listening to the imagination and intuition, communicating, taking action based on inner direction and hints from the external, being adaptable, taking responsibility and ending the victim stance forever surrendering to the divine will and working with the lessons developing fluidity, tolerance, compassion, and the ability to love.

Ability | Action | Attention | Compassion | Giving | Ideas | Imagination | Intention | Intuition | Listening | Love | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Will | Victim |

Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

A nonviolent revolution is not a program of “seizure of power.” It is a program of transformation of relationships ending in a peaceful transfer of power.

Power | Revolution |

Adelaide Love

If you should go before me, dear, walk slowly down the ways of death, well worn and wide, for I would want to overtake you quickly and seek the journey’s ending by your side. I would be so forlorn not to descry you down some shining high road when I came; walk slowly, dear, and often look behind you, and pause to hear if someone calls your name.

Death | Journey |

Bernard Berenson

A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the not-self that there is no self left to die.

Life | Life | Self |

George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

War |

Kahlil Gibran

I have been here since the beginning, and I shall be until the end of days; for there is no ending to my existence. The human souls is but a part of a burning torch which god separated from Himself at Creation.

Beginning | Existence | God | God |

Kahlil Gibran

Marriage is the union of two divinities that a third might be born on earth. It is the union of two souls in a strong love for the abolishment of separateness. It is that higher unity which fuses the separate unites within the two spirits. It is the golden ring in a chain whose beginning is a glance, and whose ending is Eternity.

Beginning | Earth | Eternity | Love | Marriage | Unity |

Kahlil Gibran

The soul is an embryo in the body of man, and the day of death is the day of awakening, for it is the great era of labour and the rich hour of creation... Death is an ending to the son of the earth, but to the soul it is the start, the triumph of life... Death removes but the touch, and not the awareness of all good. And he who has lived one spring or more possesses the spiritual life of one who has lived a score of springs.

Awakening | Awareness | Body | Day | Death | Earth | Era | Good | Life | Life | Man | Soul | Awareness |

Kahlil Gibran

The Reality of Life is Life itself, whose beginning is not in the womb, and whose ending is not in the grave. For the years that pass are naught but a moment in eternal life; and the world of matter and all in it is but a dream compared to the awakening which we call the terror of Death.

Awakening | Beginning | Death | Eternal | Grave | Life | Life | Reality | Terror | World |

Ronald S. Miller

No matter how idealistic our hopes... we eventually learn that spirituality is not about leaving life's problems behind, but about continually confronting them with honesty and courage. It is about ending our feeling of separation from others by healing our relationships with parents, co-workers, and friends. it is about bringing heightened awareness and compassion to our family life, careers, and community service.

Awareness | Compassion | Courage | Family | Honesty | Life | Life | Parents | Problems | Service | Spirituality | Awareness | Learn |

Thomas Moore

The ending of a relationship is as mysterious as its beginning... We tend to look for rational causes and to blame one of the parties for committing the crime of ending. Fate and its important relationship to the soul are forgotten... The soul in a relationship is not only contained in each individual, it is also contained in the relationship itself.

Beginning | Blame | Crime | Fate | Important | Individual | Relationship | Soul | Fate |

Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen

Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk without the loss of esteem.

Beginning | Loss |

Harold Kushner, fully Harold Samuel Kushner

I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending that haunts our sleep so much as the fear... that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived.

Fear | World |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Self-knowledge is not a process of the continuity of thinking but the diminishing, the ending of thinking. But you cannot end thinking by any trick, by denial, by control, by discipline, and so on. If you do, you are still caught in the field of thought. Thinking can only come to an end when you know the total content of the thinker, and so one begins to see how important it is to have self-knowledge.

Important | Thinking |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Only with the ending of sorrow there is passion. That is total energy, not limited by thought. So it is important to understand the nature of suffering and the ending of it. The ending of it is to hold that sorrow, that pain, too. Look at it. It is a marvellous thing to know how to hold the pain and look at it, be with it, live with it, not get bitter, cynical, but to see the nature of sorrow. There is beauty in that sorrow, depth in that sorrow.

Beauty | Important | Nature | Pain | Sorrow | Suffering | Beauty | Understand |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Knowledge does not end sorrow. The ending of sorrow begins with the facing of psychological facts within oneself and being totally aware of all the implications of those facts from moment to moment. This means never escaping from the fact that one is in sorrow, never rationalizing it, never offering an opinion about it, but living with that fact completely.

Means | Opinion | Sorrow |