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

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

Heaven and hell are states of mind. The kingdom of heaven is within you. You create your own heaven or hell. The anguish of a personal hell can serve to strengthen you if you will let it. Judgment day takes place every moment of your life.

Character | Day | Heaven | Hell | Judgment | Life | Life | Mind | Will |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

Adventure | Change | Character | Daring | Fate | Life | Life | Nothing | Strength | Fate |

Arundell Charles St. John-Mildmay

Every duty brings its peculiar delight, every denial its appropriate compensation, every thought its recompense, every love its elysium, every cross its crown; pay goes with performance as effect with cause. Meanness overreaches itself; vice vitiates whoever indulges it; the wicked wrong their own souls; generosity greatens; virtue exalts; charity transfigures; and holiness is the essence of angelhood. God does not require us to live on credit; he pays us what we earn as we earn it, good or evil, heaven or hell, according to our choice.

Cause | Character | Charity | Choice | Compensation | Credit | Duty | Evil | Generosity | God | Good | Heaven | Hell | Love | Meanness | Recompense | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Wrong | God | Thought | Vice |

Jianzhi Sengcan, Third Patriarch of Zen, Third Patriarch of Ch'an

The Perfect Way knows no difficulties, except that it refuses to make preferences. Only when freed from hate and love does it reveal itself fully and without disguise. A tenth of an inch’s difference, and heaven and earth are set apart. If you wish to see it before your own eyes have no fixed thoughts either for or against it. To set up what you like against what you dislike - this is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of the Way is not understood. Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose... Pursue not the outer entanglements, dwell not in the inner void; be serene in the oneness of things, and dualism vanishes of itself... Transformations going on in the empty world that confronts us appear to be real because of Ignorance. Do not strive to seek after the True, only cease to cherish opinions... One in all, All in One - if only this is realized, no more worry about not being perfect. When the mind and each believing mind and Mind, this is where words fail, for it is not of the past, present or future.

Character | Disease | Disguise | Earth | Future | Hate | Heaven | Ignorance | Love | Meaning | Mind | Oneness | Past | Peace | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Words | World | Worry |

Austin Phelps

Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost possible achievement - these are the martial virtues which must command success.

Achievement | Character | Daring | Force | Opportunity | Persistence | Success | Tact | Vigilance |

William Rowley

There’s no way to make sorrow light But in the noble bearing; be content; Blows given from heaven are our due punishment; All shipwrecks are not drownings; you see buildings Made fairer from their ruins.

Character | Heaven | Light | Sorrow | Wisdom |

Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

It is rascally to steal a purse, daring to steal a million, and proof of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases.

Blame | Character | Daring | Greatness | Guilt |

John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury

No man’s body is as strong as his appetites, but Heaven has corrected the boundlessness of his voluptuous desires by stinting his strength and contracting his capacities.

Body | Character | Heaven | Man | Strength |

Ralph Waldo Trine

One need remain in hell no longer than he chooses to; and the moment he chooses not to remain longer, not all the powers in the universe can prevent his leaving it. One can rise to any heaven he himself chooses; and when he chooses so to rise, all the higher powers of the universe combine to help him heavenward.

Character | Heaven | Hell | Need | Universe |

Henry Theodore Tuckerman

There is strength of quiet endurance as significant courage as the most daring fears of prowess.

Character | Courage | Daring | Endurance | Prowess | Quiet | Strength |

Paul Tyner

Man is to know himself, and with full command of his conditions and unlimited time for action, is not only to soar toward, but absolutely attain to heights of being and of beauty hitherto undreamed of, and bringing fairly within his realization a heaven on earth, in true grandeur and happiness as far transcending the heaven of the orthodox Christian as that heaven transcends the heaven of the savage.

Action | Beauty | Character | Earth | Heaven | Man | Time | Beauty | Happiness |