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

Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad

When one goes to sleep, he takes along the material of this all-containing world, himself tears it apart, himself builds it up, and dreams by his own brightness, by his own light. Then this person becomes self-illuminated. There are no chariots there, no spans, no roads. But he projects from himself chariots, spans, roads… for he is a creator.

Dreams | Light | Self | Tears | World |

Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl

There is little in common between us. The ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their final resting place is hallowed ground, while you wander away from the tombs of your fathers without regret. Your religion was written on tablets of stone by the iron finger of an angry God, lest you might forget it. The red man could never remember nor comprehend it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams of our old men, given them by the Great Spirit, and the visions of our sachems [chiefs], and is written in the hearts of our people. Your dead cease to love you and the homes of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb. They wander far off beyond the stars, are soon forgotten, and never return. Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its winding rivers, its great mountains, and its sequestered vales.

Dreams | God | Little | Love | Man | Men | People | Regret | Religion | Sacred | Spirit | World | Old |

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

[It is those who have not really lived - who have left issues unsettled, dreams unfulfilled, hopes shattered, and who have let the real things in life (loving and being loved by others, contributing in a positive way to the other people’s happiness and welfare, finding out what things are really you) pass them by - who are most reluctant to die.

Dreams | Life | Life | People | Happiness |

Eugène Ionesco, born Eugen Ionescu

Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.

Dreams |

George Bernard Shaw

Live in contact with dreams, and you will get something of their charm; live in contact with facts, and you will get something of their brutality. I wish I could find a country where the facts were not brutal, and the dreams not unreal.

Brutality | Dreams | Will |

Gampopa, known as Sonam Rinchen from Gampo or Dagpo Lha-je from Gampo NULL

In general, whatever experience you have, whether dreams or real, if you cling to them as real, they will become an obstacle. If you know them as illusion, they become the path.

Dreams | Experience | Illusion | Will |

Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. But an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its ever wakeful authority; as we are accustomed to say carelessly, we should never have dreamed of such a thing.

Authority | Dreams | Respect | Virtue | Virtue | Respect |

Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

Our truest life is when are in dreams awake.

Dreams | Life | Life |

Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake.

Dreams |

James Martineau

If we listen to our self-love, we shall estimate our lot less by; what it is than by what it is not; shall dwell upon its hindrances and be blind to its possibilities; and, comparing it only with imaginary lives, shall indulge in flattering dreams of what we should do if we had but power, and give if we had but wealth, and be if we had no temptations.

Dreams | Love | Power | Self | Self-love | Wealth |

Jonas Salk

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality.

Courage | Dreams | Hope | Imagination | Reality |

Julia Cameron

Art is an act of the soul, not the intellect. When we are dealing with people's dreams - their visions, really - we are in the realm of the sacred

Art | Dreams | People | Sacred | Soul |

Lorraine Hansberry

Seem like God don’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.

Children | Dreams | God | Man | Nothing | God |

Lewis Mumford

The most generous dreams of the past have not become immediate practical necessities: a word-wide cooperation of people, a more just distribution of al the goods of life; the use of knowledge and energy or the service of life, and the use of life itself for the extension of the human spirit to provinces where human values and purposes could not heretofore penetrate. If we awaken in time to overcome the automatisms and irrational compulsions that are now pushing nations toward destruction, we shall create a universal community.

Cooperation | Dreams | Energy | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nations | Past | People | Service | Spirit | Time |

Kahlil Gibran

How ignorant are those who see, without question, the abstract existence of some of their senses, but insist upon doubting until that existence reveals itself to all their senses. Is not faith the sense of the heart as truly as sight is the sense of the eye?... How strange is the one who dreams in truth of a beautiful reality, and then, when he endeavours to fashion it into form but cannot succeed, doubts the dream and blasphemes the reality and distrusts the beauty!

Abstract | Beauty | Dreams | Existence | Faith | Heart | Question | Reality | Sense | Truth |

Kahlil Gibran

He who passes not his days in the realm of dreams is the slave of the days.

Dreams |

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály

Just as we have learned to separate ourselves from each other and from the environment, we now need to learn how to reunite ourselves with other entities around us without losing our hard-won individuality. The most promising faith for the future might be based on the realization that the entire universe is a system related by common laws and that it makes no sense to impose our dreams and desires on nature without taking them into account. Recognizing the limitations of human will, accepting a cooperative rather than a ruling role in the universe, we should feel the relief of the exile who is finally returning home. The problem of meaning will then be resolved as the individual's purpose merges with the universal flow.

Dreams | Faith | Future | Individual | Individuality | Meaning | Nature | Need | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | System | Universe | Will | Learn |

Napoleon Hill

Cherish your vision and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blue prints of your ultimate achievements.

Children | Dreams | Soul | Vision |