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

Patrick Joseph Hayes

Be charitable in your thoughts, in your speech and in your actions. Be charitable in your judgments, in your attitudes and in your prayers. Think charitably of your friends, your neighbors, your relatives and even your enemies. And if there be those whom you can help in a material way, do so in a quiet, friendly, neighborly way, as if it were the most command and everyday experience for you. Tongues of men and angels, gifts of prophecy and all mysteries and all knowledge are as nothing without charity.

Angels | Character | Charity | Experience | Knowledge | Men | Nothing | Prophecy | Quiet | Speech | Think |

Kinza M. Hirai, fully Kinza Ringe M. Hirai

Nirvana is interpreted by Western nations as the actual annihilation of human desire or passion; but this is a mistake. Nirvana is nothing else than universal reason.

Character | Desire | Mistake | Nations | Nothing | Passion | Reason |

Judah Leon Abravanel, or Abrabanel, Leo Hebraeus, Leo Ebreo, Leo the Hebrew

Your mind is rich enough in subtlety: you must enrich it also in wisdom.

Character | Enough | Mind | Wisdom |

Rabbi Chayim Meir Hagar

A person who is sincerely humble will be constantly happy. A humble person realizes that nothing is owed him, and therefore feels satisfied with what he has. He does not raise his sights to receive what is above him. He constantly has peace of mind and always feels the joy of life.

Character | Happy | Joy | Life | Life | Mind | Nothing | Peace | Receive | Will |

Robert A. Heinlein, fully Robert Anson Heinlein, pen name for Anson MacDonald

Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business.

Ability | Business | Character | Mind | Wisdom |

Lynn Hill, aka Lynn Hill-Raffa

The purpose of my existence as I climb is to adapt my personal dimensions to the environment around me at each moment. I become an active player sharing some of the responsibility for my own destiny, achieving a heightened sense of awareness and seeing the direct result of my efforts; either I fall or I reach the top. But the meaning does not come from conquering the rock. Purpose comes from moving in harmony with nature, rather than destroying it or altering it for my immediate satisfaction. What gives life meaning is the fulfillment of directing energy in a way that brings a higher order to, and harmony with, the environment I live in... The ultimate meaning of our lives is relative to how much we have given to others. The ultimate meaning of our lives is connected with death... I would like to know that I have inspired people to go beyond self-limiting stereotypes to experience and nurture the true richness of their passions.

Awareness | Character | Death | Destiny | Energy | Existence | Experience | Fulfillment | Harmony | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Self | Sense | Awareness |

Stephan Jay Gould

The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.

Character | Human nature | Kindness | Nature |

Joseph Grew, fully Joseph Clark Grew

Moral stimulation is good but moral complacency is the most dangerous habit of mind we can develop, and that danger is serious and ever-present.

Character | Complacency | Danger | Good | Habit | Mind | Present | Danger |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

You traverse the world in search of happiness, which is within the reach of every man; a contented mind confers it on all.

Character | Man | Mind | Search | World |

William Ralph Inge

Hatred toward any human being cannot exist in the same heart as love to God.

Character | God | Heart | Love |

William James

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes.

Character | Discovery | Discovery |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

The tender mind is oft deterred from vice by another's shame.

Character | Mind | Shame | Vice |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The human species... capacity for good is infinite, since they can, they desire, make room within themselves for divine Reality. But at the same time their capacity for evil is, not indeed infinite (since evil is always ultimately self-destructive and therefore temporary), but uniquely great. Hell is total separation from God, and the devil is the will to that separation... To be diabolic on the grand scale, one must, like Milton’s Satan, exhibit in a high degree all the moral virtues, except only charity and wisdom.

Capacity | Character | Charity | Desire | Devil | Evil | God | Good | Hell | Reality | Satan | Self | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

It is the responsibility of the conscious, rational mind to decide what it accepts, retains, and dwells upon. It’s an immense responsibility.

Character | Mind | Responsibility |

William James

The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves have been flown for religious ideals.

Bravery | Character | Charity | Devotion | Human nature | Ideals | Nature | Patience | Trust |

William James

The blindness in human beings... is the blindness with which we all are afflicted in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves.

Character | Feelings | People | Regard |

John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

Fear breeds lack of experience, lack of experience breeds ignorance, ignorance breeds more fear. It is a vicious cycle.

Character | Experience | Fear | Ignorance |

David Hume

Custom is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared I the past. Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation.

Action | Character | Custom | Ends | Events | Experience | Future | Influence | Life | Life | Means | Memory | Past | Present | Speculation |

William James

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

Character | Human nature | Nature |

Anna Jameson

In every mind where there is a strong tendency to fear there is a strong capacity to hate. Those who dwell in fear dwell next door to hate; and I think it is the cowardice of women which makes them such intense haters.

Capacity | Character | Cowardice | Fear | Hate | Mind | Think |