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

Anandamayi Ma, fully Sri Anandamayi Ma, also Anandamayee Ma or Anandamoyi Ma

A saint is like a tree. He does not call anyone, neither does he send anyone away. He gives shelter to whoever cares to come, be it a man, woman, child or an animal. If you sit under a tree it will protect you from the weather, from the scorching sun as well as from the pouring rain, and it will give you flowers and fruit. Whether a human being enjoys them or a bird tastes of them matters little to the tree; its produce is there for anyone who comes and takes it.

Little | Man | Will | Woman | Child |

John A. O’Brien

Man is forever climbing up the ladder of secondary causes to the First and Supreme Cause - God Himself.

Cause | God | Man | God |

Frederick H. Ryer, Sr.

No matter how many times you have wronged or hurt by others, all it takes is one act of kindness to make you believe in the goodness that exists in the world.

Kindness | World |

Charlene Spretnak

Without nonviolence - mind states of loving kindness and compassion - at the core of our societal construct, however, even the desire to protect and preserve can be manipulated in service to barbarism masquerading as idealism.

Barbarism | Compassion | Desire | Idealism | Kindness | Mind | Service |

Albert Schweitzer

All the kindness which a man puts out into the world works on the heart and thoughts of mankind.

Heart | Kindness | Man | Mankind | World |

Albert Schweitzer

As the sun makes the ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

Kindness | Mistrust |

Karlheinz Stockhausen

This is the meaning of life - continuously to add something we haven’t know so far. That, anyway, is the meaning of all existing things. Existence is built upon the idea of the creative - that there is always something unknown to be discovered, which causes and motivates new perception, new studies, the energy to go on.

Energy | Existence | Life | Life | Meaning | Perception |

Sitting Bull, aka Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, born Hoka Psice NULL

What treaty that the white man ever made with us have they kept? Not one. When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? What white man can say I ever stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say I am a thief. What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian. What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has come to me hungry and unfed? Who has ever seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my country?

Abuse | Battle | Children | Father | Land | Law | Love | Man | Men | Money | People | Woman | World | Wrong |

Hui Shi or Huizi

The sun exactly at noon is exactly at the beginning to go down. And a creature when he is born is exactly beginning to die.

Beginning |

Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell

If choice is real, if there really are alternatives, it follows that in choosing between them we are exhibiting our power as real agents, real causes and initiators of new departures in the flow of cosmic change, we thereby prove the existence of free causes.

Change | Choice | Existence | Power |

Laurence Steinberg

What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of the rules and no involvement in the decision-making.

Assertion | Authority | Decision | Little | Power |

T’ai-p’ing-ching [Classic of the Highest Peace or Book of Supreme Peace] by Yü Chi NULL

Of all the love, kindness and pleasure a man can experience in this world, nothing is more beautiful than the love of a woman. If it is granted him, and the two have a child together, they are fused in a single heart in the child, which is truly the most pleasing thing love and kindness can give, and this will always be a bond between them.

Experience | Heart | Kindness | Love | Man | Nothing | Pleasure | Will | Woman | World | Child |

Vivekananda, fully Sri or Swami Vivekananda, born Narendra Nath Datta NULL

Duty becomes a disease with us; it drags us ever forward... This duty, this idea of duty is the midday summer sun which scorches the innermost soul of mankind... The only true duty is to be unattached and to work as free beings, to give up all work unto God.

Disease | Duty | God | Mankind | Soul | Work |

Henry Burton

Have you had a kindness shown? Pass it on.

Kindness |

Julia Alvarez

The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on.

Kindness |