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

Elbert Green Hubbard

There are six requisites in every happy marriage. The first is Faith and the remaining five are Confidence.

Confidence | Faith | Happy | Marriage |

Edward Teller

The preservation of peace and the improvement of the lot of all people require us to have faith in the rationality of humans. If we have this faith and if we pursue understanding, we have not the promise but at least the possibility of success. We should not be misled by promises. Humanity in all its history has repeatedly escaped disaster by a hair’s breadth. Total security has never been available to anyone. To expect it is unrealistic; to imagine that it can exist is to invite disaster.

Faith | History | Humanity | Improvement | Peace | People | Promise | Rationality | Security | Success | Understanding |

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The key to patience is knowing that everything is going to be fine, developing the faith that there is a plan… The first step to becoming more patient is giving up the need to fix or change things.

Change | Faith | Giving | Knowing | Need | Patience | Plan |

Elbert Green Hubbard

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

Death | Faith | Hope | Life | Life | Love |

Eric Hoffer

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves

Cause | Faith |

Franz Kafka

Man cannot live without a lasting trust in something indestructible within him, both his trust and its indestructible object can remain forever concealed from him. One expression of this concealment is man's faith in a personal God.

Concealment | Faith | God | Man | Object | Trust |

Eric Hoffer

The differences between the conservative and the radical seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward the future. Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in the future renders us receptive to change.

Change | Faith | Fear | Future | Present |

Ferdinand Foch

A leader is above all things an animator. His thought and faith must be communicated to those he leads. He and they must form as one at the moment of executing a plan. That is the essential condition of success.

Faith | Plan | Success | Thought | Leader | Thought |

French Proverbs

There are no miracles for those that have no faith in them.

Faith | Miracles |

George MacDonald

A perfect faith would lift us absolutely above fear.

Faith | Fear |

George Bernard Shaw

All who achieve real distinction in life begin as revolutionists. the most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older, though they are commonly supposed to become more conservative owing to their loss of faith in conventional methods of reform.

Distinction | Faith | Life | Life | Reform | Loss |

George Bernard Shaw

It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. to take advantage of that is to break a man's spirit is devil's work.

Devil | Faith | Man | Spirit | Work |

George Bernard Shaw

A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith. that is the purpose and nature of miracles... Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.

Faith | Fraud | Friend | Miracles | Nature | Purpose | Purpose |

George Santayana

There is a snare, however, in the very essence of knowledge in that it has to be a form of faith, and faith is something psychic rather than spiritual.

Faith | Knowledge |

George Santayana

Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of good.

Beauty | Conformity | Faith | Good | Nature | Soul |

Harvey Cox, fully Harvey Gallagher Cox, Jr.

Theology is unapologetically prescriptive. It does not claim to be value-free or neutral. Theologians draw upon the beliefs of a particular tradition to suggest a course of action, an appropriate response, a way of life commensurate with what the faith teaches. Theology can be wrong; it cannot be noncommittal.

Action | Faith | Life | Life | Theology | Tradition | Wrong |

George Santayana

Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.

Beauty | Conformity | Faith | Good | Nature | Soul |

George MacDonald

The principal part of faith is patience.

Faith | Patience |

George Santayana

To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.

Beauty | Better | Contemplation | Faith | Hope | Imagination | Love | Nature | Science | Taste | Beauty | Contemplation | Understand |