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 Simmons

Immortality is the greatness of our being; the scene for attaining the fullness and perfection of our existence.

Character | Existence | Greatness | Immortality | Perfection |

Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson

The humorous man recognizes that absolute purity, absolute justice, absolute logic and perfection are beyond human achievement and that men have been able to live happily for thousands of years in a state of genial frailty.

Absolute | Achievement | Justice | Logic | Man | Men | Perfection | Purity | Wisdom |

Sherwood Anderson

A man needs a purpose for real health.

Health | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfection.

Imperfection | Man | Perfection | Wisdom |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Then still a purpose enclosing all, and over and beneath all, ever since what might be call’d thought, or the budding of thought, fairly began in my youthful mind, I had had a desire to attempt some worthy record of that entire faith and acceptance to justify the ways of God to man... which is the foundation of moral America... to formulate a poem whose every thought or fact should directly or indirectly be or connive at an implicit belief in the wisdom, health, mystery, beauty of every process, every concrete object, every human or other existence, not only consider’d from the point of view of all, but of each. While I can not understand it or argue it out, I fully believe in a clue and purpose in Nature, entire and several; and that invisible spiritual results, just as real and definite as the visible, eventuate all concrete life and all materialism through Time.

Acceptance | Beauty | Belief | Character | Desire | Existence | Faith | God | Health | Justify | Life | Life | Man | Materialism | Mind | Mystery | Nature | Object | Purpose | Purpose | Thought | Time | Wisdom | Beauty | God | Poem | Thought | Understand |

Franco Zeffirelli

Saint Francis says the key to the purpose of life is giving. In giving, you find happiness. You find peace. If you give, you find you are serving your purpose in life. In loving, you find love.

Character | Giving | Life | Life | Love | Peace | Purpose | Purpose |

Freddy Arevalo, aka Don Valerio Cohaila

I am a particle of this organism called the earth... Life is because life must be... Life and death are cosmic breath... Each person designs his own destiny... The purpose of life is to continue developing consciousness.

Consciousness | Death | Destiny | Earth | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |

Yamada Koun Zenshin, or Koun Yamada or Yamada Roshi

The purpose of Zen is the perfection of character.

Character | Perfection | Purpose | Purpose | Zen |

Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf

The lack of awareness of sense and purpose has led culture to become increasingly shallow.

Awareness | Character | Culture | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Wisdom | Awareness |