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

Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL

A kingdom is embellished by the wise, and religion rendered illustrious by the pious.

Pious | Religion | Wisdom | Wise |

Ichabod Smith Spencer

To experience religion is to experience the truth of the great doctrines of divine grace.

Experience | Grace | Religion | Truth | Wisdom |

Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith

Religion... sex... race... money... avoidance rites... malnutrition... dreams - no part of these can be looked at and clearly seen without looking at the whole of them. For, as a painter mixes colors and makes of them new colors, so religion is turned into something different by race, and segregation is colored as much by sex as by skin pigment, and money is no longer a coin but a lost wish wandering through a man’s whole life.

Dreams | Life | Life | Man | Money | Race | Religion | Rites | Wisdom |

Simonides, aka Simonedes of Ceos NULL

Painting is silent poetry, poetry painting that speaks.

Poetry | Wisdom |

Jeremy Taylor

A religion without mystery must be a religion without God. In dwelling on divine mysteries, keep thy heart humble, thy thoughts reverent, thy soul holy. Let not philosophy be ashamed to be confuted, nor logic to be confounded, nor reason to be surpassed. What thou canst not prove, approve; what thou canst not comprehend, believe; what thou canst believe, admire and love and obey. so shall thine ignorance be satisfied in thy faith, and thy doubt be swallowed up in thy reverence, and thy faith be as influential as sight. Put out thing own candle, and then shalt thou see clearly the sun of righteousness.

Doubt | Faith | God | Heart | Ignorance | Logic | Love | Mystery | Philosophy | Reason | Religion | Reverence | Righteousness | Soul | Wisdom |

John Randolph Stidman

It is the little things in life that are the sublime things. It is the minor parts of the great drama which make up the whole. The handclasp, the smile, the words of confidence or encouragement; these are the strength and bulwark of society, business, religion - and home life. Without them, there would be no trust; without trust, our world would collapse.

Business | Confidence | Life | Life | Little | Religion | Smile | Society | Strength | Trust | Wisdom | Words | World |

Simone Weil

Workers need poetry more than bread. They need some light from eternity. Religion alone can be the source of such poetry.

Eternity | Light | Need | Poetry | Religion | Wisdom |

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

The most sublime labor of poetry is to give sense and passion to insensate things; and it is characteristic of children to take inanimate things in their hands and talk to them in play as if they were living persons... in the world's childhood, men were by nature sublime poets.

Childhood | Children | Labor | Men | Nature | Passion | Play | Poetry | Sense | Wisdom | World |

Richard Whately

If our religion is not true, we are bound to change it; if it is true, we are bound to change it; if it is true, we are bound to propagate it

Change | Religion | Wisdom |

Franz Werfel, fully Franz Viktor Werfel

Every petrified religion is like a blasphemy.

Blasphemy | Religion | Wisdom |

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, sometimes called "The Iron Duke"

The Lord's Prayer contains the sum total of religion and morals.

Lord | Prayer | Religion | Wisdom |

Cedric Hubbell Whitman

Mythology is what grown-ups believe, folklore is what they tell the children, and religion is both.

Children | Religion | Wisdom |

Stefan Zweig

It is a consoling fact that, in the end, the moral independence of mankind remains indestructible. Never has it been possible for a dictatorship to enforce one religion or one philosophy upon the whole world. Nor will it ever be possible, for the spirit always escapes from servitude; refuses to think in accordance with prescribed forms, to become shallow and supine at the word of command, to allow uniformity to be permanently imposed upon it.

Mankind | Philosophy | Religion | Servitude | Spirit | Uniformity | Will | Wisdom | World | Think |

Gaius Glenn Atkins

The constants in all religion are the mystery of the universe, the nostalgia of the human spirit for an order beyond the show and flux of things to which it believes itself akin, and the belief that it has evidence of such an order.

Belief | Evidence | Mystery | Order | Religion | Spirit | Universe |

Octavius Winslow

There is poetry and there is beauty in real sympathy; but there is more - there is action. The noblest and most powerful form of sympathy is not merely the responsive tear, the echoed sigh, the answering look; it is the embodiment of the sentiment of actual help.

Action | Beauty | Poetry | Sentiment | Sympathy | Wisdom | Beauty |

Al-Hallaj NULL

I have meditated on the different religions, endeavoring to understand them, and I have found that they stem from a single principle with numerous ramifications. Do not therefore ask a man to adopt a particular religion (rather than another), for this would separate him from the fundamental principle. It is this principle itself which must come to seek him.

Man | Religion | Understand |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

In the religion which we shall call dynamic, prayer is independent of its verbal expression; it is an elevation of the soul that can dispense with speech.

Dynamic | Prayer | Religion | Soul | Speech |