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

Evelyn Underhill

The business and method of mysticism is love.

Important | Life | Life | Reading | Sense | Wonder |

Evelyn Underhill

On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.

Contrast | Life | Life | Little | Need | Oratory | Rights | Sense | Wants | Will |

Evelyn Underhill

Adoration is caring for God above all else.

Life | Life | Reality | Sense |

Evelyn Underhill

We have descended into the garden and caught 300 slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and the squalid in gardening. It makes it so lifelike.

Acceptance | Prayer | Sense |

Ezra Taft Benson

The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it.

Belief | Experiment | Family | Freedom | Future | Genius | God | Government | Heaven | History | Inspiration | Knowledge | Land | Man | Men | Mission | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Sense | Government | God |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves.

Sense |

Ezra Taft Benson

Tonight I will speak to you about our beloved republic and the inspired agents whom God raised up to establish the foundation upon which our liberty rests. . . . I speak to you as members of the “household of faith,” the Lord’s true church, and remind you of your solemn charge to uphold, sustain, and defend the kingdom of God. The destiny of America was divinely decreed. The events that established our great nation were foreknown to God and revealed to prophets of old. As in an enacted drama, the players who came on the scene were rehearsed and selected for their parts. Their talent, abilities, capacities, and weaknesses were known before they were born.

Abundance | Authority | Body | Books | Man | Mother | Sense | Tenderness |

Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Historians today are priests of a cult of truth, called to the service of a god whose existence they are doomed to doubt.

Excess | Fear | Individual | Modernity | People | Sense | Society | Terror | World | Society |

Faye Wattleton

In a health-care situation, you see humanity at its most basic, and you realize there are no simple yes-or-no, right-or-wrong answers.

Family | Life | Life | Obligation | Parents | Sense | Value |

Felix Adler

It is the moral element contained in it that alone gives value and dignity to a religion, and only in so far as its teachings serve to stimulate and purify our moral aspirations does it deserve to retain its ascendency over mankind.

Better | Business | Desire | Faith | Human race | Influence | Life | Life | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Right | Sense | Business |

Felix Adler

The platform of an Ethical Society is itself the altar; the address must be the fire that burns thereon.

Contrast | Life | Life | Love | Mortal | Pain | Peace | Sense | Thought | Time | Understanding | Thought |

Felix Adler

To-day, in the estimation of many, science and art are taking the place of religion. But science and art alike are inadequate to build up character and to furnish binding rules of conduct. We need also a clearer understanding of applied ethics, a better insight into the specific duties of life, a finer and a surer moral tact.

Children | Heart | Life | Life | Little | Meaning | Order | Rank | Sense | Words | Teacher | Understand |

Felix Adler

There is a difficulty in the way of teaching the higher life, due to the fact that only those who have begun to lead it can understand the meaning of it. Nevertheless, all men can be induced to begin to lead it. Though they seem blind, their eyes can be opened so as to see. Deep down in every human heart is the seed of a diviner life, which only needs the quickening influence of right conditions to germinate.

Aid | Effort | Plan | Sense |

Gustave Flaubert

Often, when they spoke of Paris, she would murmur: "Ah! How happy we'd be, living there!" "Aren't we happy here?" the young would softly ask, passing his hand over her hair.

Common Sense | Sense |

Gustave Flaubert

On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.

Sense |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Happiness is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

Sense |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom? and the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.

Excitement | Sense |

Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra

I love to travel, but sometimes it's nice to stay in one place.

People | Sense |

Italian Proverbs

The best is the enemy of the good.

Sense |

Italian Proverbs

No one ever became poor through giving alms.

Art | Design | Sense | Technology | Thinking | Will | Art |