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

Gregg Braden

Prayer transcends imposing our will upon others. Prayer represents opportunity to become more than such cycles by employing our science of feeling to bring new possibilities to an existing situation… Prayer is a concrete, measurable, and directive force in creation. Prayer is real. To pray is to do “something!

Force | Opportunity | Prayer | Science | Will |

John Cotton

Not in any prescribed form of prayer, or studied liturgie, but in such manner as the Spirit of grace and prayer teacheth all the people of God.

God | Grace | People | Prayer | Spirit |

Jacques Cousteau, formally Hacques-Yves Cousteau, known as 'le Commandant Cousteau' or 'Captain Cousteau'

It takes generosity to discover the whole through others. If you realize you are only a violin, you can open yourself up to the world by playing your role in the concert.

Generosity | World |

Henry Sloane Coffin

When we pray for another, it is not an attempt to alter God’s mind toward him. In prayer we add our wills to God’s good will… that in fellowship with Him He and we may minister to those whom both He and we love.

God | Good | Love | Mind | Prayer | Will | Wills |

Rudolf Diesel, fully Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel

The hope that technology will save us or will miraculously effect our moral improvement is a kind of modern idolatry.

Hope | Improvement | Technology | Will |

Emmet Fox

Every condition in your life is the out-picturing of a belief in the subconscious. Every ailment, every difficulty that you have, is but the embodiment of a negative idea somewhere in your subconscious, which is actuated by a charge of fear. Prayer wipes out these negative thoughts and then their embodiment must disappear too. The healing must come.

Belief | Difficulty | Fear | Life | Life | Prayer |

Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

Three of the greatest teachers of the world, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, have left unimpeachable testimony that they found illumination through prayer and could not possibly live without it.

Prayer | World |

Emmet Fox

Truth is true because it is true – not because we make it so. Prayer does not change things for us, but it changes them by tuning us in to the eternal Truth. You have nothing to deal with but your own thoughts, and your own beliefs. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Change | Eternal | Nothing | Prayer | Truth |

James W. Fowler III

Most often faith is understood as belief in certain propositional, doctrinal formulations that in some essential ands static way are supposed to “contain” truth. But if faith is relational, a pledging of trust and fidelity to another, and a way of moving into the force field of life trusting in dynamic center of value and power, then the “truth” of faith takes on a different quality. Truth is lived: it is a pattern of being in relation to others and to God. In this light, doctrines and creeds come to be seen as playing a different though still crucial role. Rather than being the repositories of truth, like treasure chests to be honored and assented to, they becomes guides for the construction of contemporary ways of seeing and being.

Belief | Dynamic | Faith | Fidelity | Force | God | Life | Life | Light | Power | Trust | Truth | Value |

Emmet Fox

There is no end to prayer. It echoes on forever in your soul. Long after the visible demonstration has been made and forgotten, the prayer that produced it continues to work for your spiritual advancement, for the creative power of a God-thought is unlimited and eternal.

Eternal | God | Power | Prayer | Soul | Thought | Work |

Emmet Fox

Every small improvement is a part of the bridge between today’s location and your heart’s desire.

Desire | Heart | Improvement |

Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

Our prayer for others ought never to be: “God, give them the light Thou has given to me!” but: “God! Give to them all the light and truth they need for their highest development!”

God | Light | Need | Prayer | Truth |

Sidney Greenberg

A waste far more worthy of our tears is the enormous energy within us that never gets channeled, the love that is never expressed, the kindness that never surfaces, the compassion and tenderness that are never awakened.

Compassion | Energy | Kindness | Love | Tears | Tenderness | Waste |

George D. Herron

If the instinctual and repressed kindness of mankind were suddenly let loose upon the earth, sooner than we think would we be members one of another, sitting around one family hearth-stone, and singing the song of the new humanity.

Earth | Family | Humanity | Kindness | Mankind | Think |

Aelred Graham

Without the worship of the heart liturgical prayer becomes a matter of formal routine; its technically finished performance may give aesthetic pleasure, but the spirit has gone out from it.

Aesthetic | Heart | Pleasure | Prayer | Spirit | Worship |

Sidney Greenberg

The function of prayer is not to enable us to acquire what we should like to possess, but rather to become what we are capable of being.

Prayer |

Goldie Hawn, fully Goldie Jeanne Hawn

I have witnessed the softening of the hardest of hearts by a simple smile. Human kindness can turn armaments into armistice.

Kindness | Smile |

Sidney Greenberg

Greatness is a matter not of size but of quality, and it is within the reach of every one of us. Greatness lies in the faithful performance of whatever duties life places upon us and in the generous performance of the small acts of kindness that God has made possible for us. There is greatness in patient endurance; in unyielding loyalty to a goal; in resistance to the temptation to betray the best we know; in speaking up for the truth when it is assailed; in steadfast adherence to vows given and promises made. God does not ask us to do extraordinary things. He asks us to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Endurance | God | Greatness | Kindness | Life | Life | Loyalty | Loyalty | Size | Temptation | Truth | Vows | God | Temptation |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.

Consciousness | Prayer | Self | Surrender |