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

John Greenleaf Whittier

We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave of text and legend. Reason’s voice and God’s, Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save justice and mercy and humility, a reasonable service of good deeds, pure living, tenderness to human needs, reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see the Master’s footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, but the calm beauty of an ordered life whose very breathing is unworded praise! A life that stands as all true lives have stood firm-rooted in the faith that God is good.

Beauty | Children | Deeds | Duty | Faith | Father | God | Good | Humility | Justice | Life | Life | Light | Mercy | Nature | Praise | Prayer | Reason | Reverence | Service | Tenderness | Trust | Beauty | God |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

When The conscience is ... A brake, not a guide; a fence, not a way. It raises its voice after a wrong deed has been committed, but often fails to give us direction in advance of our actions.

Conscience | Wrong |

Aharon Appelfeld

The writer in western civilization has become not a voice of his tribe, but of his individuality. This is a very narrow-minded situation.

Civilization | Individuality |

Alvin Toffler

The responsibility for change… lies with us. We must begin with ourselves, teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, the surprising, the seemingly radical. This means fighting off the idea-assassins who rush forward to kill any new suggestion on grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, not matter how absurd, oppressive, or unworkable it may be. It means fighting for freedom of expression – the right of people to voice their ideas, even if heretical.

Absurd | Change | Fighting | Freedom | Ideas | Kill | Means | People | Responsibility | Right |

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, fully Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

Conscience | Humanity | Justice |

A.C. Benson, fully Arthur Christopher “A.C.” Benson

What we have to do is to see as deep as we can into the truth of things, not to invent paradises of thought, sheltered gardens, from which grief and suffering shall tear us, naked and protesting; but to gaze into the heart of God, and then to follow as faithfully as we can the imperative voice that speaks within the soul.

God | Grief | Heart | Soul | Suffering | Thought | Truth |

Blaise Pascal

It is your own assent to yourself, and the constant voice of your own reason, and not of others, that should make you believe.

Reason |

Charles Caleb Colton

Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other; it warns us with a voice tht even the sagest discredit too long, and the silliest believe too late. Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it; he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends.

Ambition | Desire | Dread | Enemy | Fear | Friend | Grave | Hope | Little | Opportunity | Repentance | Time | Will | Wisdom | Wise |

Charles Caleb Colton

There are two things that declare, as with a voice from heaven, that he that fills that eternal throne must be on side of virtue, and that which he befriends must finally prosper and prevail. The first is that the bad are never completely happy and at ease, although possessed of everything that this world can bestow; and that the good are never completely miserable, although deprived of everything that this world can take away. The second is that we are so framed and constituted that the most vicious cannot but pay a secret though unwilling homage to virtue, inasmuch as the worst men cannot bring themselves thoroughly to esteem a bad man, although he may be their dearest friend, nor can they thoroughly despise a good man, although he may be their bitterest enemy.

Despise | Enemy | Esteem | Eternal | Friend | Good | Happy | Heaven | Man | Men | Virtue | Virtue | World |

Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze

The wise man… when he must govern, know how to do nothing… In complete silence, his voice will be like thunder. His movements will be invisible, like those of a spirit, but the powers of heaven will go with them. Unconcerned, doing nothing, he will see all things grow ripe around him. Where will he find time to govern?

Heaven | Man | Nothing | Silence | Spirit | Time | Will | Wise |

Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

If you have some idea you believe in, don't listen to the croaking chorus. Listen only to what your own inner voice tells you.

Dag Hammarskjöld

The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.

Better | Will |