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

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Adoration is an activity of the loving, but still separate individuality. Contemplation is the state of union with the divine Ground of all being. The highest prayer is the most passive. Inevitably; for the less there is of self, the more there is of God.

Character | Contemplation | God | Individuality | Prayer | Self | Contemplation |

Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva

No man can force the harp of his own individuality into the people’s heart; but every man may play upon the chords of the people’s heart, who draws his inspiration from the people’s instinct.

Character | Force | Heart | Individuality | Inspiration | Instinct | Man | People | Play |

Walter Kerr, fully Walter Francis Kerr

The work we are doing is more or less the work we meant to do in life [but] it does not yield us the feeling of accomplishment we had expected... If I were required to put into a single sentence my own explanation of the state of our hearts, heads, and nerves, I would do it this way: we are vaguely wretched because we are leading half-lives, half-heartedly, and with only one-half of our minds actively, engaged in making contact with the universe about us.

Accomplishment | Character | Life | Life | Universe | Work |

Jaron Lanier, fully Jaron Zepel Lanier

Life is based on limitation and compromise. The fact that we forget the meaning of life is the meaning of life. Being in a state of partial awareness allows experience and life to progress. God, as an omniscient being, is not an “experiencing being” because his or her experience is not new. If You were going to start a universe, what would Your options be? You could choose to remain totally stagnant, but that wouldn’t amount to a true universe. You’d need entities that experience it, entities that are fragile and temporary and not omniscient. That’s who we are and why we’re here.

Awareness | Character | Experience | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Need | Progress | Universe | Awareness |

Holger Kalweit

Our culture needs a great deal more than a changed lifestyle. In the Western mind, thought-structures and the relationship between consciousness and matter are badly out of balance, so that our world has become wholly pervaded by a materialism that is threatening to squash us to death. We are in a state of materialistic hypertrophy, and our eventual self-destruction would in fact be no more than the logical consequence of our attitudes.

Balance | Character | Consciousness | Culture | Death | Materialism | Mind | Relationship | Self | Thought | World |

Philip Kapleau

In giving yourself over wholly to whatever you are doing at the moment you can achieve a deeper and richer state of mind.

Character | Giving | Mind |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Love comes into being only when there is total harmony in oneself, in whatever action one is doing, and so there is no conflict between the outer and the inner.

Action | Character | Harmony | Love |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

Your success and happiness lie in you. External conditions are the accidents of life. The great enduring realities are love and service. Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow. Resolve to keep happy and your joy in you shall form an invincible host against difficulty.

Character | Difficulty | Happy | Intelligence | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Purpose | Purpose | Service | Success | Happiness |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Ambition | Character | Experience | Quiet | Soul | Success | Suffering | Vision | Ambition | Trial |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

When at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment of each one of us - recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state - our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions - were we truly men of courage... were we truly men of judgment... were we truly men of integrity... were we truly men of dedication?

Character | Courage | Dedication | Failure | Future | History | Integrity | Judgment | Men | Office | Service | Success | Will |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The truth of not-knowing is the only factor from which one can move. The truth of that is stable. A mind that does not know is in a state of learning. The moment I say I have learned, I have stopped learning and that stopping is the stability of division.

Character | Knowing | Learning | Mind | Truth |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Reality comes into being only when the mind is still, not made still. Therefore, there must be no disciplining of the mind to be still. When you discipline yourself, it is merely a projected desire to be in a particular state. Such a state is not the state of passivity... Liberation is from moment to moment in the understanding of what is, when the mind is free, not made free. It is only a free mind that can discover, not a mind molded by a belief or shaped according to a hypothesis. Such a mind cannot discover. There can be no freedom is there is conflict, for conflict is the fixing of the self in relationship.

Belief | Character | Desire | Discipline | Freedom | Hypothesis | Mind | Reality | Relationship | Self | Understanding |

George Leonard, fully George Burr Leonard

Conservation is a state of harmony between man and land.

Character | Conservation | Harmony | Land | Man |

Wilma Mankiller, fully Wilma Pearl Mankiller

The meaning of life is to live in balance and harmony with every other living thing in creation. We must all strive to understand the interconnectedness of all living things and accept our individual role in the protection and support of other life forms on earth. We must also understand our own insignificance in the totality of things.

Balance | Character | Earth | Harmony | Individual | Insignificance | Life | Life | Meaning | Understand |

Rita Levi-Montalcini

Only by deep involvement in the problems of the greater society can one achieve happiness, or at least, harmony with oneself.

Character | Harmony | Problems | Society | Society |

Yechezkail Levenstein

A person is a success if he works on the trait of sincerely desiring other people’s success. It is easy to talk as if you wish someone success but inwardly hope he fails. In general you should know that without hard work and wisdom it is impossible to reach any virtue, and you will remain with your natural tendencies and behavior.

Behavior | Character | Hope | People | Success | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wisdom | Work |