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

Thomas Hobbes

Faith is a gift of God which man can neither give or take away by promise of rewards or menaces of torture.

Faith | God | Man | Promise | Torture | God |

Walter Marshall Horton

The kingdom of God is neither an unconditional divine gift sent down from heaven all at once, nor a simple human task to be completed in a few generations. It is both a gift and a task: an infinitely difficult, infinitely glorious divine-human undertaking requiring all God’s power and all man’s devotion, and even so stretching on from age to age as though it were endless.

Age | Devotion | God | Heaven | Man | Power | God |

Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller

Toleration… is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

Balance | Effort | Mind | Toleration |

Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

Because Release is a gift – a reality not earned, not merited, not attained in any way – there flows naturally from the experience of release, the experience of Gratitude. Gratitude can best be defined and understood as the only possible response to a gift, to something recognized as utterly, freely given. Gratitude is the vision – the way of seeing – that recognizes “gift.”

Experience | Gratitude | Reality | Vision |

Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

Would you like to liberate yourself from the lower realms of life? Would you like to save the world from degradation and destruction it seems destined for? Then step away from the shallow mass movements and quietly go to work on your own self-awareness. If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself... Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.

Awareness | Humanity | Life | Life | Self | Self-awareness | Work | World |

Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

Happiness – the joy of living – comes in the experience of gratitude that flows forma vision of one’s life as a reality received, a gift given freely and spontaneously. Such a vision removes self from the center, thus healing self-centeredness by revealing the folly of the illusion of control.

Control | Experience | Folly | Gratitude | Illusion | Joy | Life | Life | Reality | Self | Vision |

Wayne Muller

If we follow what we love, if we live deeply and attentively in this moment, we will not feel bound by regret at the moment of our death. We will live with reverence for all things and a deep gratefulness for the gift of a single day upon the earth.

Day | Death | Earth | Love | Regret | Reverence | Will |

Wayne Muller

Proximity to death wakes us up. Death dispels the most potent illusion about life – that it belongs to us, and that we have all the time to we need to arrange it the way we want. But in many ways it is a gift that our life is limited, impermanent. We hold it more dear because this is so.

Death | Illusion | Life | Life | Need | Time |

Wayne Muller

Four simple questions have shaped the spiritual journeys of pilgrims and seekers for thousands of years. These questions enable us to gently awaken the four fundamental realms of inner life: Identity, Love, Daily Practice, and Kindness. (1) Who am I? We have within us an essential nature that is whole and unbroken. (2) What do I love? (3) How shall I live, knowing I will die? Every moment of life is a precious gift. (4) What is my gift to the family of the earth?

Earth | Family | Kindness | Knowing | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Practice | Will |

Wayne Muller

Our life is not a problem to be solved, it is a gift to be opened… If we are preoccupied with what is missing and what is broken and wrong, we lose the miraculous harvest of all these tiny gifts, piled on upon the other, that accumulate without our acknowledging them. If we listen more carefully for the infinite blessings of a single day, this will not discount or obliterate our sorrows. But it will help us remember how strong and rich we can be, even in the midst of suffering.

Blessings | Day | Life | Life | Suffering | Will | Wrong |

Fritz A. Rothschild

Time is the presence of God in the world of space, and it is within time that we are able to sense the unity of all beings… Every instant is an act of creation. A moment is not a terminal but a flash, a signal of Beginning. Time is perpetual innovation, a synonym for continuous creation. Time is God’s gift to the world of space.

Beginning | God | Innovation | Sense | Space | Time | Unity | World | God |

Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL

Charity is above all a hymn of love. Real, pure love is the gift of oneself; it is the desire of diffusion and complete donation that is an essential part of goodness.

Charity | Desire | Love |

Malian Proverbs

One does not give a gift without a motive.

James McCune Smith

Freedom and Liberty are not synonyms. Freedom is an essence; Liberty, an accident. Freedom is born with a man; Liberty may be conferred upon him… Freedom is the gift of God; Liberty, the creature of society. Liberty may be taken away from a man; but on whatsoever soul Freedom may light, the course of that soul is henceforth onward and upward.

Accident | Freedom | God | Liberty | Light | Man | Society | Soul |

Sharon Salzberg

Generosity’s aim is twofold: we give freely to others, and we give freely to ourselves. Without both aspects, the experience is incomplete. If we give a gift freely, without attachment to a certain result or expectation of what will come back to us, that exchange celebrates freedom both within ourselves as the giver and the receiver… In a moment of pure giving, we really become one.

Expectation | Experience | Freedom | Generosity | Giving | Will | Expectation |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge… Nothing becomes truly “one’s own” except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice… The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free.

Aid | Effort | Knowledge | Nothing | People | Sacrifice |

David Schmidtz

Meanings track relationships… Our lives become intrinsically valuable to us by becoming instrumentally valuable to others. Meaning can be our gift to each other.

Meaning |