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

Charles Augustin Sainte-Veuve

Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.

Character | Man | Soul |

Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson

Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man's life.

Action | Character | Life | Life | Man | Serenity | Spirit |

Francis Quarles

Of all vices to take heed of drunkenness; other vices are but fruits of disordered affections - this disorders, nay, banishes reason; other vices but impair the soul - this demolishes her two chief faculties, the understanding and the will; other vices make their own way - this makes way for all vices; he that is a drunkard is qualified for all vice.

Character | Reason | Soul | Understanding | Will |

Theodore Refke

What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance.

Character | Madness | Nobility | Soul |

Phyllis V. Schlemmer and Dalden Jenkins

Our bodies and egos are vehicles by which we can access the experience of physical living. As a key ingredient in an automobile is its driver, so the key ingredient in a person is soul. Without active alignment to soul - a person is lost - the fundamental meaning of life is missing. Planet Earth is a sort of “soul-field”, a body of experience with a characteristic flavor, which individual souls enter to learn, evolve and serve. Perhaps it is a Hall of Mirrors at a fairground, where we see ourselves reflected, expanded and compressed in so many different ways.

Body | Character | Earth | Experience | Individual | Life | Life | Meaning | Soul |

William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, fully Field Marshal Sir William Joseph "Bill" Slim

When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder.

Action | Character | Mind |

Samuel Smiles

Conscience is that peculiar faculty of the soul which may be called the religious instinct.

Character | Conscience | Instinct | Soul |

William Gilmore Simms

Better that we should err in action than wholly refuse to perform. The storm is so much better than the calm, as it declares the presence of a living principle. Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption also.

Action | Better | Character | Corruption | Death |

Gordon-Michael Scallion

All life is initiation. Each experience, each act, deed, especially thoughts, are a portion of initiation. Initiation then is the process whereby the entity - the soul force, is given the opportunity to develop spiritually. This means, that when the soul chooses to improve itself - to move towards a greater light, the soul body so changes its vibration as to remove from its spiritual fabric those attachments detrimental to its path upward.

Body | Character | Experience | Force | Life | Life | Light | Means | Opportunity | Soul |

William Secker

A soul without watchfulness is, like a city without walls, exposed to the inroads of all its enemies.

Character | Soul | Watchfulness |

Albert Schweitzer

The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty.

Beauty | Character | Sense | Soul | Truth | World |

Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof

The only true method of action in this world is to be in it, but not of it.

Action | Character | Method | World |