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

Henry Ford

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Reputation |

Dave Tyson Gentry

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.

People | Silence | Friendship |

Emmet Fox

A covenant is a contract. When two people enter into a covenant, it means that one party undertakes to do certain things provided the other party does certain other things. Thus it is a mutual agreement… If you think only kindly, , optimistic, and constructive thoughts, if you will speak only positive and helpful words at all times, if you will do only good and constructive deeds, you will be fulfilling your side of the great covenant – and in no circumstances could God fail to fulfill His.

Circumstances | Deeds | God | Good | Means | People | Will | Words | God | Think |

Mu-mon Gensen, also Mumon Gensen

Words cannot describe everything. The heart’s message cannot be delivered in words. If one receives words literally, he will be lost. If he tries to explain with words, eh will not attain enlightenment in this life.

Enlightenment | Heart | Life | Life | Will | Words |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

By negligence and silence we have all become accessory before the God of mercy to the injustice committed against the Negroes by men of our nation.

God | Injustice | Injustice | Men | Mercy | Silence | God |

Sidney Greenberg

Some of the most sacred promises are made without words in the silent sanctuary of the soul.

Sacred | Soul | Words |

O. Henry, pen name for William Sydney Porter

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving.

Art | Business | Family | Love | Man | Nothing | Patriotism | Religion | Words | Business | Art |

Sidney Greenberg

Greatness is a matter not of size but of quality, and it is within the reach of every one of us. Greatness lies in the faithful performance of whatever duties life places upon us and in the generous performance of the small acts of kindness that God has made possible for us. There is greatness in patient endurance; in unyielding loyalty to a goal; in resistance to the temptation to betray the best we know; in speaking up for the truth when it is assailed; in steadfast adherence to vows given and promises made. God does not ask us to do extraordinary things. He asks us to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Endurance | God | Greatness | Kindness | Life | Life | Loyalty | Loyalty | Size | Temptation | Truth | Vows | God | Temptation |

Sidney Greenberg

Living life at its best means keeping on speaking terms with my conscience, to do nothing to outrage it or to inflict pain upon it. When my acts do violence to my moral or ethical standards, I sustain a loss for which no pleasure or material gain can compensate me, for I shrink in moral stature. When I keep my friendship with the best in me, I achieve a serenity which cloaks life with gentle beauty.

Beauty | Conscience | Life | Life | Means | Nothing | Pain | Pleasure | Serenity | Friendship | Loss |

Václav Havel

I believe that, for the rest of the world, contemporary America is an almost symbolic concentration of all the best and the worst of our civilization. On the one hand, there are its profound commitment to enhancing civil liberty and to maintaining the strength of its democratic institutions, and the fantastic developments in science and technology which have contributed so much to our well-being; on the other, there is the blind worship of perpetual economic growth and consumption, regardless of their destructive impact on the environment, or how subject they are to the dictates of materialism and consumerism, or how they, through the omnipresence of television and advertising, promote uniformity, and banality instead of a respect for human uniqueness.

Advertising | Civilization | Commitment | Growth | Liberty | Materialism | Omnipresence | Respect | Rest | Science | Strength | Technology | Television | Uniformity | World | Worship | Respect |

Robert K. Greenleaf

Responsibility . . . requires that a person think, speak and act as if personally accountable to all who may be affected by his or her thoughts, words and deeds… Awareness is important… Am I moving in the right direction? Is my sense of responsibility growing, deepening, becoming sharper and more insistent?.. A sense of responsibility is an attitude, a feeling.

Awareness | Deeds | Important | Responsibility | Right | Sense | Words | Awareness |

Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou

It is love which is the voice of the heart. Love God and you will be always speaking to him.

God | Heart | Love | Will | God |

Václav Havel

We are living at a time when humankind can face whatever threatens it only if we, by which I mean each of us, manage to revive, with new energy and new ethos, a sense of responsibility for the rest of the world.

Energy | Responsibility | Rest | Sense | Time | World |

Hillel NULL

What is hateful to you don’t do to another. This is the whole Torah [i.e., Law]; the rest is commentary.

Law | Rest | Torah |

Mohamed Iqbal or Sir Muhammad Iqbal, aka Allama Iqbal

Prayer is an expression of man’s inner yearning for a response in the awful silence of the universe. It is a unique process of discovery whereby the searching ego affirms itself in the very moment of self-negation, and thus discovers its own worth and justification as a dynamic factor in the life of the universe.

Discovery | Dynamic | Ego | Justification | Life | Life | Man | Prayer | Self | Silence | Unique | Universe | Worth | Discovery |