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

Thomas Merton

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

Individual | Life | Life | Perfection |

Thomas Merton

When we live superficially … we are always outside ourselves, never quite ‘with’ ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions … we find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives.

Chance | Children | Land | Love | Purity | Quiet | Rest | Vision | Old |

Thomas Merton

You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right... The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important. In our age everything has to be a ‘problem.’ Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves. Sanctity in such an age means, no doubt, traveling from the area of anxiety to the area in which there is no anxiety or perhaps it may mean learning, from God, to be without anxiety in the midst of anxiety. Fundamentally, as Max Picard points out, it probably comes to this: living in a silence which so reconciles the contradictions within us that, although they remain within us, they cease to be a problem.

Fulfillment | Labor | Loneliness | Vision |

Thomas Cronin, fully Thomas Edward Cronin

Great teachers give us a sense not only of who they are, but more important, of who we are, and who we might become. They unlock our energies, our imaginations, and our minds. Effective teachers pose compelling questions, explain options, teach us to reason, suggest possible directions, and urge us on. The best teachers, like the best leaders, have an uncanny ability to step outside themselves and become liberating forces in our lives.

Associates | Circumstances | Deeds | Important | Mission | Past | People | Trust | Vision | Deeds | Leader | Understand |

Maximus of Tyre, fully Cassius Maximus Tyrius NULL

A divine nature has no need of statues or altars; but human nature being very imbecile, and as much distant from divinity as earth from heaven, devised these symbols, in which it inserted the names and the renown of the gods. Those, therefore, whose memory is robust, and who are able, by directly extending their soul to heaven, to meet with divinity, have, perhaps no need of statues. This race is, however, rare among men, and in a whole nation you will not find one who recollects divinity, and who is not in want of this kind of assistance.

Absolute | Eternal | Hell | Ignorance | Individual | Past | Reality | Sin | Universe | Vision | Loss |

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Before The Rain - We knew it would rain, for all the morn A spirit on slender ropes of mist Was lowering its golden buckets down Into the vapory amethyst. Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens-- Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers, Dipping the jewels out of the sea, To sprinkle them over the land in showers. We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed The white of their leaves, the amber grain Shrunk in the wind--and the lightning now Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!

Good | Grave | Mankind | Perfection | Reading |

Tzvi Freeman

A Jew is here for one reason alone: To change the world. Abraham did not smash the idols in his father’s house, Moses did not rebel against the inhumanity of Egypt, simply to foster yet another obscure cult. And the Jew has succeeded. The modern mind paints its thoughts upon a canvas of Jewish axioms: the sanctity of human life, universal education, monotheism, a sense of purpose, an ideal of world peace. The impact of the Jewish mind has been so thorough, so pervasive, as to compel Christopher Rees-Mogg to write that, “…any modern man who has not learned to think as though he were a Jew can hardly be said to have learned to think at all.”

Heart | Love | Vision | Wants | Will | World |

Tzvi Freeman

All that can be cherished from this world, all that makes life worth living is that which is mined from its bowels through your own toil, fashioned from its clay by your own craft, fired in the kiln of your heart. Oh, how precious, how delightful a feast, the life that has been forged by its own master!

Faith | Vision |

Wilfred Cantwell Smith

1) We talk about you. 2)We talk to you. 3)We talk with one another. And 4) We talk with one another about ourselves. When we are talking about one another, and when we are talking to (or at) one another there is no dialogue. The dialogue starts when we are at the place of talking with one another. Sometimes in the process of dialogue, we discover we have moved to the deeper, fourth stage. We are talking with one another about ourselves.

Abstract | Argument | Faith | Piety | Religion | Sense | System | Vision | Theoretical |

W. T. Stace, fully Walter Terence Stace

The essential character of Neo-Platonism comes out in its theory of the mystical exaltation of the subject to God. It is the extremity of subjectivism, the forcing of the individual subject to the centre of the universe, to the position of the Absolute Being. And it follows naturally upon the heels of Scepticism. In the Sceptics all faith in the power of thought and reason had finally died out. They {377} took as their watchword the utter impotence of reason to reach the truth. From this it was but a step to the position that, if we cannot attain truth by the natural means of thought, we will do so by a miracle. If ordinary consciousness will not suffice, we will pass beyond ordinary consciousness altogether. Neo-Platonism is founded upon despair, the despair of reason. It is the last frantic struggle of the Greek spirit to reach, by desperate means, by force, the point which it felt it had failed to reach by reason. It seeks to take the Absolute by storm. It feels that where sobriety has failed, the violence of spiritual intoxication may succeed. It was natural that philosophy should end here. For philosophy is founded upon reason. It is the effort to comprehend, to understand, to grasp the reality of things intellectually. Therefore it cannot admit anything higher than reason. To exalt intuition, ecstasy, or rapture, above thought--this is death to philosophy. Philosophy in making such an admission, lets out its own life-blood, which is thought. In Neo-Platonism, therefore, ancient philosophy commits suicide. This is the end. The place of philosophy is taken henceforth by religion. Christianity triumphs, and sweeps away all independent thought from its path. There is no more philosophy now till a new spirit of enquiry and wonder is breathed into man at the Renaissance and the Reformation. Then the new era begins, and gives birth to a new philosophic impulse, under the influence of which we are still living. But to reach that new era of philosophy, the human spirit had first to pass through the arid wastes of Scholasticism.

Age | Aims | Control | Effort | Faith | God | Inquiry | Invention | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Nothing | People | Pleasure | Principles | Purpose | Purpose | Revolution | Science | Spirit | Time | Universe | Vision | World | God |

William Blake

From ‘Milton’ - And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire! I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land.

Friend | Light | Men | Mortal | Vision |

William Blake

Mechanical excellence is the only vehicle of genius.

God | Vision | God |

William Blake

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

Mortal | Vision |

William Blake

To mercy, pity, peace and love all pray in their distress, and to these virtues of delight return their thankfulness. For mercy pity peace and love is god our father dear. And mercy pity peace and love is man his child and care. Then every man of every clime that prays in his distress prays to the human form divine: love mercy pity peace. And all must love the human form in heathen, Turk, or Jew. Where mercy, love and pity dwell there god is dwelling too.

Bible | Rank | Understanding | Vision | World | Bible |

William Blake

You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.

Art | Care | Man | Perfection | Art |

Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt

All merit ceases the moment we perform an act for the sake of its consequences. Truly, in this respect "we have our reward."

Growth | Perfection |

Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

You can’t say that civilization don’t advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.

Common Sense | Intelligence | Sense | Vision |

Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

One might say that every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure; a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique. A quality which one can remember without the volume at hand, can experience over and over again in the mind but can never absolutely define, as one can experience in memory a melody, or the summer perfume of a garden... It is a common fallacy that a writer, if he is talented enough, can achieve this poignant quality by improving upon his subject-matter, by using his "imagination" upon it and twisting it to suit his purpose. The truth is that by such a process (which is not imaginative at all!) he can at best produce only a brilliant sham, which, like a badly built and pretentious house, looks poor and shabby after a few years. If he achieves anything noble, anything enduring, it must be by giving himself absolutely to his material. And this gift of sympathy is his great gift; is the fine thing in him that alone can make his work fine. The artist spends a lifetime in pursuing the things that haunt him, in having his mind "teased" by them, in trying to get these conceptions down on paper exactly as they are to him and not in conventional poses supposed to reveal their character; trying this method and that, as a painter tries different lightings and different attitudes with his subject to catch the one that presents it more suggestively than any other. And at the end of a lifetime he emerges with much that is more or less happy experimenting, and comparatively little that is the very flower of himself and his genius.

Church | Miracles | Power | Rest | Vision |

Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun

If our intention had been merely to bring back a handful of soil and rocks from the lunar gravel pit and then forget the whole thing, we would certainly be history's biggest fools. But that is not our intention now—it never will be. What we are seeking in tomorrow’s [Apollo 11] trip is indeed that key to our future on earth. We are expanding the mind of man. We are extending this God-given brain and these God-given hands to their outermost limits and in so doing all mankind will benefit. All mankind will reap the harvest…. What we will have attained when Neil Armstrong steps down upon the moon is a completely new step in the evolution of man.

Hope | Vision | Will |

Wilhelm Reich

I contend to be a fighter for pureness and truth. I hesitate, because I am afraid of you and your attitude towards truth. To say the truth about you is dangerous to life.

Art | Better | Error | Existence | Insight | Labor | Meaning | Nature | Perfection | Research | Thought | Will | Work | World | Art | Learn | Think | Thought |