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

Tatjana Patitz

I believe that being true to the self is the most important thing in life - to have a free heart, a pure soul and a pure mind. We all live, or should live, for the fulfillment of the self. We are all mirror images of each other; whatever we feel in ourselves we feel in others. I believe that we create our own lives... Intuition should play the main role in everything we do. Through the creative source of the mind and the unlimited power of the spirit all our deepest wishes come true. For me the meaning is that we are all one, and the only true reality is the spirit. Believing in the power of spirit is simply to have a passion for life, to learn, to grow, to evolve and most of all to love, and live each day and each moment of the day to the fullest.

Character | Day | Fulfillment | Heart | Important | Intuition | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mind | Passion | Play | Power | Reality | Self | Soul | Spirit | Wishes |

Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

The principal reason for sex deification is loss of belief in God. Once men lose God, they lose the purpose of life; and when the purpose of living is forgotten, the universe becomes meaningless. Man then tries to forget his emptiness in the intensity of a momentary experience.

Belief | Character | Experience | God | Life | Life | Man | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Universe | Loss |

Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, aka Beis Halevi

Anyone who runs after worldly pleasures is running after something that does not really exist. The reality is that the pleasure he seeks will not be found in the matter he desires.

Character | Pleasure | Reality | Will |

Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

To be rich in admiration and free from envy; to rejoice greatly in the good of others; to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear possession in absence; these are the gifts of fortune which money cannot buy and without which money can buy nothing. He who has such a treasury of riches, being happy and valiant himself, in his own nature, will enjoy the universe as if it were his own estate; and help the man to whom he lends a hand to enjoy it with him.

Absence | Admiration | Character | Envy | Fortune | Generosity | Good | Happy | Heart | Love | Man | Money | Nature | Nothing | Riches | Universe | Will |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

To will and not to do when there is opportunity, is in reality not to will; and to love what is good and not to do it, when it is possible, is in reality not to love it.

Character | Good | Love | Opportunity | Reality | Will |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Wisdom is of the soul, it is not susceptible of proof, it is its own proof, applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; something there is in the flot of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Character | Excellence | Immortality | Qualities | Reality | Soul | Wisdom | Excellence |

Simone Weil

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

Character | Reality | Wisdom |

Lionel Trilling

The diminution of the reality of class, however socially desirable, in many respects seems to have the practical effect of diminishing our ability to see people in their differences and specialness.

Ability | Character | People | Reality |

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 |

Yechiel Michel Tukatinsky

From the perspective of the minuteness of our planet in relationship with the entire universe a person’s seeking honor is ridiculous.

Character | Honor | Relationship | Universe |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

One universe made up of all that is; and one God in it all, and one principle of being, and one law, the reason shared by all thinking creatures, and one truth.

God | Law | Reason | Thinking | Truth | Universe | Wisdom | God |