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

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

If we are to appreciate the inner dynamics we don't need to change them or judge them. There is wisdom in each of the dynamics observed. To determine what you think should happen is placing the ego in charge of the show. When the deep beingness seeks a change you will know it. Otherwise the wisdom is to put oneself in accord with the Mystery. This is hard for anyone with degrees of control issues.

Challenge | Ego | Extreme | Mystery | Need | Phenomena | Power | Sense | Success | Time | Loss | Value |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

I don’t care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it. All this is only the road to a World Revolution.

Aims | Cause | Challenge | Evil | Hate | Means | Order | Present | Time | Wants | Will |

Vimala Thakar

The cleverness of the human mind has led us to the complex, horrifying, and all-encompassing crisis that we now face. The familiar solutions, based on a limited view of what a human being is, continue to fail, to be pathetically inadequate. Yet we pour vast resources into these tired solutions and feel that if we achieve a grand enough scale, the old solutions will meet the new challenges. Do we have the courage to see failures as failures and leave them to the past? Do we have the vitality to go beyond narrow, one-sided views of human life and to open ourselves to totality and wholeness? The call of the hour is to move beyond the fragmentary, to awaken to total revolution.

Challenge | Life | Life | Little | Revolution | Safe | Ugly | Wholeness |

Vimala Thakar

A spontaneous cessation of mental activity releases an absolutely new and dynamic energy. Silence increases the sensitivity of the total being. It refreshes the nervous system in an astounding way. As you come out totally replenished when you have had profound and innocent sleep, So do you come out totally renewed when you have had ceased to function through the ego in the hour of silence.

Beginning | Challenge | Consciousness | Effort | Global | Isolation | Luxury | Mind | Question | Self-righteousness | Understanding | Wholeness | Will | Crisis |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

An outlaw to Truth is an in-law to pain.

Challenge | Feelings |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Everyone possesses an internal self-correction system to which he must connect himself.

Challenge | Existence | Power | Present | Talking |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

On a piece of paper write, “What I do when I am scared.” Then list numerically what you do. Keep it simple. Write down everything you remember. This includes all the centers: physical, mental, emotional and the sex center. For example: 1. I get tense, 2. I get anxious, 3. I get jealous, or 4. I retreat. The longer the list, the better work you are doing and the more you know about the machine. With that knowledge, something higher than the machine will repair it for you.

Challenge | Will |

Victor Hugo

True thinkers are characterized by a blending of clearness and mystery.

Calamity | Challenge | Calamity | Afraid |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons.

Challenge | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Question |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, and the thoughts of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I still would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of that image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."

Challenge | Life | Life | Majority | Men | Opportunity |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

You would say that our patients never really despair because of any suffering in itself! Instead, their despair stems in each instance from a doubt as to whether suffering is meaningful. Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering as soon and as long as he can see a meaning in it.

Challenge | Need | Will | World |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response.

Accomplishment | Challenge | Chance | Circumstances | Failure | Greatness | Life | Life | Majority | Men | Opportunity | People | Words | Failure | Think |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The Creator Himself has created the universe; He Himself shall destroy it.

Challenge | Cruelty | Future | Money | Society | Sympathy | Worship | Cruelty | Society | Child |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The Lord is the Lover of His devotees; He inspires them to perform devotional worship. True devotional worship consists of eliminating selfishness and conceit from within.

Challenge | Desire | Lord | Learn |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

The only way your powers can become great is by exerting them outside the circle of your own narrow, special, selfish interests… how he can lift his brother, how he can assist his friend, how he can enlighten mankind, how he can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which he lives.

Challenge | Men | Obstacle |

Thurgood Marshall

History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.

Challenge | Doubt |

Thurgood Marshall

Certain people have a way of saying things that shake us at the core. Even when the words do not seem harsh or offensive, the impact is shattering. What we could be experiencing is the intent behind the words. When we intend to do good, we do. When we intend to do harm, it happens. What each of us must come to realize is that our intent always comes through. We cannot sugarcoat the feelings in our heart of hearts. The emotion is the energy that motivates. We cannot ignore what we really want to create. We should be honest and do it the way we feel it. What we owe to ourselves and everyone around is to examine the reasons of our true intent.

Challenge | Mother | Rights | Worth | Child |

William Harvey

The examination of the bodies of animals has always been my delight; and I have thought that we might thence not only obtain an insight into the . . . mysteries of Nature, but there perceive a kind of image or reflex of the omnipotent Creator himself.

Challenge | Decision |

Drew Curtis

The main problem with Headline Contradicted by Actual Article is that most people don’t read articles, they read only headlines and move on. Judging from the click-out patterns on Fark, the average person on a given visit to Fark will click on maybe three links out of around two hundred. As for the rest of the links, they read the outrageous tagline, figure they know what the rest of the article says, and move on.

Challenge | Majority | News | Nothing | People | Rumor |

Elif Safak

How do you name him? - Asked his wife, when she proudly showed blocks. Gentle sea breeze wafted the aroma of jasmine and floated between them. From the lips of Pavel Pavlovich Antipov fell off explaining that she could not say: - Agrippina, this is your baby, whose eyes were the color of ash. I will always love you, but I will not expect more than you can give him. Will be the sole and only you, but would not want to devote him. Never claim will not cry, I will not get sick and not die. Did not grow. If you do not leave, and it will not let you down. Will be called as you want. How would you call it?

Challenge | Good | Love | Need |