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

Mustapha Mahmoud

At first glance, life appears meaningless, futile, full of contradictions and absurdities. But a deeper, meditating look uncovers beauty, order and harmony, revealing life as a supreme accomplishment of eternal wisdom... All of creation is an act of love and providence, a drama imbued with meaning... In simple words: Life is a mission of awareness and awakening and deep enlightenment. We are here to sense this divine presence beyond all phenomena. We are here to recognize a deep urge in our hearts to act in harmony, in conformity and in love with these divinities.

Accomplishment | Awakening | Awareness | Beauty | Character | Conformity | Enlightenment | Eternal | Harmony | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mission | Order | Phenomena | Providence | Sense | Wisdom | Words | Awareness |

Henry Parry Liddon

Prayer is the act by which man, detaching himself from the embarrassments of sense and nature, ascends to the true level of his destiny

Character | Destiny | Man | Nature | Prayer | Sense |

John E. Large, fully John Ellis Large

Social security depends on personal security. And personal security depends on spiritual security. Spiritual security is primary, in the sense that every other kind of security stems from it. Without spiritual security, there just can’t be any other kind of lasting security.

Character | Security | Sense |

Sinclair Lewis, fully Harry Sinclair Lewis

There are two insults no human will endure: the assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Assertion | Character | Humor | Sense | Will |

Yosef Zev Leipowitz

We usually view praying due to suffering that the suffering comes because of external situations and hence we have to pray. But this is not correct. The purpose of the suffering was that we should pray. By pouring our hearts to the Almighty, we become closer to Him and the suffering is a tool for our elevation.

Character | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering |

John Locke

Affectation in any part of our carriage is lighting up a candle to see our defects, and never fails to make us taken notice of, either as wanting sense or sincerity.

Affectation | Character | Defects | Sense | Sincerity |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.

Character | Life | Life | Sense | Wisdom | Talent |

Theodore T. Munger

The habit of saving is itself an education; it fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind.

Character | Education | Forethought | Habit | Mind | Order | Self | Self-denial | Sense | Virtue | Virtue |

Theodore T. Munger

There is no road to success but through a clear strong purpose. Nothing can take its place. A purpose underlies character, culture, position, attainment of every sort.

Attainment | Character | Culture | Nothing | Position | Purpose | Purpose | Success |

David O. McKay

Find a purpose in life so big it will challenge every capacity to be at your best.

Capacity | Challenge | Character | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Will |

Robert J. McCracken, D.D.

The greatest danger that faces this country is the danger of moral lassitude - liberty turned to license, rights demanded and duties shirked, the moral sense deteriorating, the traditions and standards of the nation weakened, the spiritual forces within it losing ground.

Character | Danger | Liberty | Rights | Sense | Danger |

David O. McKay

The true purpose of life, aside from resisting oppression from without, each individual carries within himself, the responsibility of living nobly or ignobly.

Character | Individual | Life | Life | Oppression | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Love hates people to be attached to each other except by himself, and takes a laggard part in relations that are set up and maintained under another title, as marriage is. Connections and means have, with reason, as much weight in it as graces and beauty, or more. We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry must as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us. Therefore I like this fashion of arranging it rather by a third hand than by our own, and by the sense of other rather than by our own. How opposite is all this to the conventions of love!

Beauty | Character | Family | Love | Marriage | Means | People | Posterity | Practice | Race | Reason | Sense | Title |

Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows.

Character | Heart | Injustice | Injustice | Integrity | Patience | Purpose | Purpose |

Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

If you lend a person any money, it becomes lost for any purpose as one’s own. When you ask for it back again, you may find a friend made an enemy by your kindness. If you begin to press still further, either you must part with that which you have intrusted, or else you must lose that friend.

Character | Enemy | Friend | Kindness | Money | Purpose | Purpose |

Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, born Frederick Lawrence

If I were asked to sum up in a single phrase the main purpose of individual life I would express it as the enlargement of personality. Unless an individual can transcend the limits of class, sex, race, age and creed, his personality remains of necessity to that extent incomplete.

Age | Character | Creed | Individual | Life | Life | Necessity | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Wisdom |

Barthold Niebuhr, fully Barthold Georg Neibuhr

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.

Character | Faith | Good | History | Hope | Love | Nothing | Sense | Worth |