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

René Descartes

For just as faith teaches us that the supreme felicity of the other life consists only in this contemplation of the Divine Majesty, so we continue to learn by experience that a similar meditation, though incomparably less perfect, causes us to enjoy the greatest satisfaction of which we are capable of in this life.

Contemplation | Experience | Faith | Life | Life | Meditation | Contemplation | Learn |

Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.

Beginning | Faith | Humor | Laughter | Prayer |

Rita Mae Brown

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.

Sanity | Statistics | Suffering | Think |

Romain Rolland

Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepares the way for the faith of tomorrow.

Faith | Skepticism | Tomorrow |

Sholem Asch, born Szalom Asz, also written Shalom Asch

I can see no hope for our unhappy world save that which lies in the renewal of the moral and spiritual values which our common ideal of faith has created.

Faith | Hope | World |

Smiley Blanton

The first and finest lesson that parents can teach their children is faith and courage.

Children | Courage | Faith | Lesson | Parents | Teach |

Sherwood Eddy, born George Sherwood Eddy

Faith is not trying to believe something regardless of the evidence. Faith is daring to do something regardless of the consequences.

Consequences | Daring | Evidence | Faith |

Sosan Zenji, aka Chien-chih Seng-Tsan or Ch'an Seng-ts'an

One thing, all things: move along and intermingle, without distinction. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about nonperfection. To live in this faith is the road to nonduality, because the nondual is one with the trusting mind.

Anxiety | Anxiety | Distinction | Faith | Mind |

Mahabharata or The Mahabharata NULL

He that hath faith hath wisdom; he that hath wisdom hath peace. He that hath no wisdom and no faith, whose soul is one of doubt, is destroyed.

Doubt | Faith | Peace | Soul | Wisdom |

Sosan Zenji, aka Chien-chih Seng-Tsan or Ch'an Seng-ts'an

For the unified mind in accord with the Way all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value. In this world of Suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self.

Faith | Imagination | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mind | Nothing | Power | Self | Thought | World |

Thomas Carlyle

Pin thy faith to no man’s sleeve. Has thou not two eyes of they own?

Faith | Man |

Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog

The improver of knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

Authority | Faith | Knowledge | Sin | Skepticism |

Tom Brown, Jr.

Modern thought is the prison of the soul and stands between man and his spiritual mind. The logical mind cannot know absolute faith, nor can it know pure thought, for the logic feeds upon logic and does not accept things that cannot be known and proven by the flesh. Thus man has created a prison for himself and for his spirit, because he lacks belief and purity of thought. Faith needs no proof nor logic, yet man needs proof before he can have faith. Man then has created a cycle which cannot be broken, for where proof is needed, there can be no faith.

Absolute | Belief | Faith | Logic | Man | Mind | Prison | Purity | Soul | Spirit | Thought | Thought |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

Systems exercise the mind; but faith enlightens and guides it.

Faith | Mind |