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

Vimala Thakar

Correct diet implies the right quality and quantity as well as the frequency of intake. Eating should be related to appetite. It should not cause any excitement, or emotional disturbance. It should be gone through peacefully and happily. One has to be very alert to see that everything one eats is fully digested. The body should not be burdened with undigested food. The cleanliness of all the internal organs is one of the most important factors of meditation.

Compassion | Decision | Force | Life | Life | Strength | Wholeness |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

Kay Arr, said the nursemaid, and Septimus heard her say Kay Arr close to his ear, deeply, softly, like a mellow organ, but with a roughness in her voice like a grasshopper's, which rasped his spine deliciously and sent running up into his brain waves of sound which, concussing, broke. A marvelous discovery indeed - that the human voice in certain atmospheric conditions (for one must be scientific, above all scientific) can quicken trees into life!

Contemplation | Control | Decision | Father | Inclination | Light | Mother | Position | Qualities | Quiet | Sadness | Spirit | Parting | Contemplation | Old |

Victor Hugo

Conscience is God present in man.

Decision | Precision | Precision |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious 'Yes' in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. 'Et lux in tenebris lucent'--and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present; that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.

Decision | Dignity | Freedom | Opportunity |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

Sigmund Freud once asserted, “Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge.” Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the individual differences did not blur but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints.

Behavior | Decision | Dignity | Freedom | Life | Life | Man | Martyrs | Mind | Suffering | Witness | Words |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

Choice | Decision | Dignity | Freedom | Man | Opportunity |

Tryon Edwards

The best rules of rhetoric are, to speak intelligently; speak from the heart; have something to say; say it; and stop when you've done.

Decision | Important | Promptness | Value |

Thucydides NULL

The freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation.

Adversity | Decision | Fate | Fortune | Good | Lesson | Mankind | People | Power | Prosperity | Reason | Success | Truth | War | Fate |

Thucydides NULL

An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character, and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy.

Courage | Daring | Decision | Generosity | Pleasure | Present | Will | Hardship | Friends |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.

Day | Decision | Mind | Will |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

Comparisons of one's lot with others' teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.

Consequences | Contemplation | Conversation | Decision | Deliberation | Dread | Enough | Glory | Illusion | Life | Life | Men | Past | Poverty | Practice | Reality | Deliberation | Contemplation | Think |

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 |

William James

When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. ... His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast...

Care | Decision | Order | Responsibility |

William James

We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the

Consciousness | Day | Decision | Psychology | Resolution | Struggle | Time | Will | Think |

Elizabeth Dole, fully Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole

Women share with men the need for personal success, even the taste of power, and no longer are we willing to satisfy those needs through the achievements of surrogates, whether husbands, children, or merely role models.

Decision | Listening | People | Policy | Public |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance.

Body | Decision | Experience | Force | Friend | Little | People | Wrong | Govern | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is American, too-the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness.

Belief | Books | Care | Decision | Diligence | Divinity | Faith | Reason | Religion | Universe | Will |

Elizabeth Gilbert

To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have 4 legs instead of 2. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.

Body | Decision | Little | People | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging, Dear saint-please, please, please...give me the grace to win the lottery. This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated staue comes to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust, My son-please, please, please...buy a ticket. Prayer is a realtionship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm ainming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift.

Belief | Books | Care | Decision | Destiny | Divinity | Faith | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Reason | Religion | Scripture | Will | God |

Elizabeth Gilbert

You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here

Circumstances | Decision | Little | Need |