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

Stewart B. Johnson

Our business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves - to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterdays by our today, to do our work with more force than ever before.

Business | Character | Force | Life | Life | Work | Business |

László Kardos

Every man is an island. Each person radiates feelings to others, but ultimately we are alone. For me, the essence of life is how we handle our loneliness. There are moments when we manage to resolve this loneliness through personal relationships, especially through love. But there are also certain situations in which you feel truly alone, when even words and affection cannot ease your fears.

Character | Feelings | Life | Life | Loneliness | Love | Man | Words |

Petra Kelly, fully Petra Karin Kelley

Since human beings have a moral conscience, a spiritual self and a physical self, we can choose among various options. And we are responsible for the consequences of our choices. We can put the common interests of humankind above the conflicts of ideological, racial, religious and national groups. We can bring together thought and feeling, politics and moral values, women and men, the underprivileged and the privileged.... The essence of life is to search for happiness. To realize this end, we must become one with the human family, one with the universe... We should live as if we were to die today. We should die as if we live forever.

Character | Conscience | Consequences | Family | Life | Life | Men | Politics | Search | Self | Thought | Universe | Thought |

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

There is an aliveness in people who are living life and not merely observing or intellectualizing it... During the time of catastrophic change, each individual has the opportunity to feel fully alive and resource-filled-awake far beyond the daily soporific states of consciousness in which most of us reside. Living on an edge heightens the human awareness. It does not dull it.

Aliveness | Awareness | Change | Character | Consciousness | Individual | Life | Life | Opportunity | People | Time |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

Personality is the supreme realization of the innate individuality of a particular living being. Personality is an act of the greatest courage in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, and the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom of personal decision.

Absolute | Character | Courage | Decision | Existence | Freedom | Individual | Individuality | Life | Life | Personality |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

In every adult there lurks a child - an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the human personality which wants to develop and become whole.

Attention | Care | Character | Education | Eternal | Personality | Wants | Child |

Margarita Kenetic

Where can you draw the line between your life and the next person’s life? How good can your life be if the next person’s life is rotten?

Character | Good | Life | Life |

Eric Allen Johnston

The things a man believes most profoundly are rarely on the surface of his mind or tongue. Newly acquired notions - decisions based on expediency, the fashionable ideas of the moment - are right on top of the pile, ready to be displayed in bright after-dinner conversation. But the ideas that make up a man's philosophy of life are somewhere way down below.

Character | Conversation | Ideas | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Philosophy | Right |

Gloria D. Karpinski

In surrender we can both give and receive. Relationships take on a different meaning. We learn to be in someone’s life without being in their dance. A relationship becomes important not because it satisfies personality needs but because it’s the pathway to wholeness.

Character | Important | Life | Life | Meaning | Personality | Receive | Relationship | Surrender | Wholeness | Learn |

Ya’akov Dov "Katzele" Katz

We are constantly repeating messages in our minds. If they are negative: “I’m a failure,” “The world is an awful place,” “Nothing ever goes right,” we make our lives miserable. We have the ability to consciously make an effort to repeat to our selves positive messages: “I have the ability to keep improving,” “The world contains many wonderful opportunities,” “Everything that happens to me can be used for growth”... Little by little they will have a positive effect on your personality and emotions.

Ability | Character | Effort | Emotions | Failure | Growth | Little | Nothing | Personality | Right | Will | World |

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

The great spiritual and political viewpoint of the West is that we are all equal and are all capable of developing into the same end product. Anybody who bothers to examine the facts can easily see we are not all equal. What we really are is not so much equal as unique. None of us is the same as anybody else. In this uniqueness is a profound Spiritual Realization: Life is infinitely creative and requires uniqueness for creativity.

Character | Creativity | Life | Life | Unique |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.

Character | Important | Wisdom |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Our inward values and judgments are based on pleasure, not on any great, tremendous principles, but just on pleasure... The active principle of our life is pleasure.

Character | Life | Life | Pleasure | Principles |