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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.

Absurd | Good | Influence | Insult | Mankind | Nothing | Pleasure | Wisdom | Wishes | Insult |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A good man, through obscurest aspirations, has still an instinct of the one true way.

Good | Instinct | Man | Wisdom |

Henry Giles

Man is greater than a world, than systems of worlds; there is more mystery in the union of soul with the physical than in the creation of a universe.

Man | Mystery | Soul | Universe | Wisdom | World |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

The intellect of the wise is like glass. It admits the light of heaven and reflects it.

Heaven | Light | Wisdom | Wise | Intellect |

William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet

An instinct is an agent which performs blindly and ignorantly a work of intelligence and knowledge.

Instinct | Intelligence | Knowledge | Wisdom | Work |

William Randolph Hearst

Let us distinguish between the creation of wealth for the community and the extortion of wealth from the community.

Distinguish | Wealth | Wisdom |

Crawford Greenewalt, fully Crawford Hallock Greenewalt

Behind every advance of the human race is a germ of creation growing in the mind of some long individual. An individual whose dreams waken him in the night while others lie contentedly asleep.

Dreams | Human race | Individual | Mind | Race | Wisdom |

Isaac Thomas Hecker

Religion is the answer to that cry of Reason which nothing can silence, that aspiration of the soul which no created thing can meet, that want of the heart which all creation cannot supply.

Aspiration | Heart | Nothing | Reason | Religion | Silence | Soul | Wisdom | Aspiration |

Hugh Reginald Haweis

[Music] It reveals us to ourselves, it represents those modulations and temperamental changes which escape all verbal analysis, it utters what must else remain forever unuttered and unutterable; it feeds that deep, ineradicable instinct within us of which all art is only the reverberated echo, that craving to express, through the medium of the senses, the spiritual and eternal realties which underlie them.

Art | Eternal | Instinct | Music | Wisdom | Art |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

Things as they are are changed when we demonstrate a new reality. A very small change in perception can result in a change in behavior and, cumulatively, in a very large change in cultural patterns. Our purpose and destiny are encoded within us. But they do not automatically propel us to the next act in our day, let alone the next stage in our evolution. Our Fourth Instinct allows us to see that next stage, and our free will enables us to act on it so that it can become a reality.

Behavior | Change | Day | Destiny | Evolution | Free will | Instinct | Perception | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Will | Wisdom |

Howard Mumford Jones

To find out what we presently are and where we are going, we must know what we have been and what others have done; and this, because the humanities are at once the creation and the interpreters of the past, is the great purpose of humanistic scholarship.

Past | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |

Firuz Kazemzadeh

The problem of our purpose is a religious problem... Our purpose is derived from faith and is imposed onto reality by our own souls. But faith and religious truth themselves are not absolute. They are relative. Thus the answers one gives to questions about the purpose of life must necessarily be relative to a time, a place, a tradition... To know and worship God means, in Baha’ullah’s words, to promote the unity of the human race and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men”... Someday there will be a global society in which humanity will realize its spiritual and moral potential... The destiny of mankind, actually, is the ultimate creation of the world civilization. It is only in the service of such a cause that I find the meaning and purpose of life.

Absolute | Cause | Civilization | Destiny | Faith | Global | God | Human race | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Mankind | Meaning | Means | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Reality | Service | Society | Spirit | Time | Tradition | Truth | Unity | Will | Wisdom | Words | World | Worship | Society | God |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.

Judgment | Truth | Understanding | Wisdom | World | Intellect | Understand |

Henry James, Sr.

Nature is but the echo of the soul, and images nothing therefore of the Divine creation and providence which is not primarily impressed by the soul.

Nature | Nothing | Providence | Soul | Wisdom |

Muzaffer Ozak, fully Sheikh Muzaffer Ozak al-Jerrahi

Affection is the basis for the creation of the entire universe, all beings and creatures. Everything has affection as its base and foundation. Affection is the marrow and essence of all worlds, visible or invisible known or unknown. Affection is the secret of creation.

Universe | Wisdom |

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Music moves us, and we know not why; we feel the tears but cannot trace their source. Is the language of some other state, born of its memory? For what can wake the soul's strong instinct of another world like music?

Instinct | Language | Memory | Music | Soul | Tears | Wisdom | World |

Walter Savage Landor

What is companionship where nothing that improves the intellect is communicated and where the larger heart contracts itself to the model and dimension of the smaller?

Heart | Model | Nothing | Wisdom | Companionship | Intellect |

John Locke

The visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of creation that a rational creature who will but seriously reflect on them cannot miss the discovery of a deity.

Discovery | Power | Will | Wisdom | Discovery |