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

Betty Friedan

The blackout of images of women or men visibly over sixty-five, engaged in any vital or productive adult activity, and their replacement by the ‘problem’ of age, is our society’s very definition of age. Age is perceived only as a decline or deterioration from youth.

Age | Character | Men | Society | Youth |

Yaakov Neiman

Some people ask why the righteous suffer in this world. To a great extent the question is based on a misconception. Often, the criteria people use to judge whether another person is living a good life or not is by his financial standard of living... A truly righteous person by definition lives a happy life. Such a person has internalized the awareness that all the occurrences in his life are for the good, and he has satisfaction from his life. His life has meaning and purpose. His whole being is focused on spiritual elevation. He deeply feels that the good life is to fulfill the will of the Almighty and hence he feels great pleasure in the good deeds that he performs.

Awareness | Character | Deeds | Good | Happy | Life | Life | Meaning | People | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Will | World | Deeds | Awareness |

William L. Abbott

Develop the art of friendliness. One can experience a variety of emotions staying home and reading or watching television; one will be alive but hardly living. Most of the meaningful aspects of life are closely associated with people. Even the dictionary definition of life involves people.

Art | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | People | Reading | Television | Will | Wisdom | Art |

Phillips Brooks

A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward.

Prayer | Wisdom |

Merimom Cunninggim

The teaching profession is the only profession that has no definition for malpractice.

Wisdom |

Harry Golden, born Herschel Goldhirsch

The school is a place or institution for teaching and learning. Underneath this definition in every standard dictionary is another definition: School is a large number of fish of the same kind swimming together in the same direction.

Learning | Wisdom |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

If subjectivity is the truth, the conceptual account of truth must include an expression of the antithesis to objectivity, a mark of the fork in the road where the way swings off; that expression will serve at the same time to indicate the tension of the subjective inwardness. Here is such a definition of truth: the truth is an objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation process of the most passionate inwardness, the highest truth attainable for an existing individual.

Antithesis | Individual | Objectivity | Time | Truth | Uncertainty | Will | Wisdom |

Shailer Mathews

We are still souls, even though we may have lost the definition of what souls are.

Wisdom |

Guiseppe Mazzini

Life is a mission. Every other definition is false, and leads all who accept it astray. Religion, science, philosophy, though still at variance upon many points, all agree in this, that every existence is an aim.

Existence | Life | Life | Mission | Philosophy | Religion | Science | Wisdom |

Frederick D. Power, fully Frederick Dunglison Power

Here is a mystery, the stupendous mystery of the Christian religion, the ineffable mystery of three persons in one God. We cannot define it. Every human attempt at definition involves it in deeper mystery. The arithmetic of heaven is beyond us. Yet this is no more mysterious and inexplicable than the trinity of our own nature; body, soul, and spirit; and no man has ever shown that it involved a contradiction or in any way conflicted with the testimony of our senses or with demonstrated truth; and we must accept it by the power of a simple faith, or rush into tritheism on the one hand or unitarianism on the other.

Body | Contradiction | Faith | God | Heaven | Man | Mystery | Nature | Power | Religion | Soul | Spirit | Truth | Wisdom |

J. B. Rhine, fully Joseph Banks Rhine

If parapsychology deals with all the personality manifestations that are beyond explanation by physics, then by definition it should claim the entire spiritual order of reality.

Order | Personality | Reality | Wisdom |

Richard and Greta Smolowe

We all would do well to entertain the possibility of new alternative realities; since it is our definition of reality that decides for each of us what is possible, and what is not possible... Our personal 'reality' is shaped by our thoughts. They determine how we perceive our future, our accomplishments, our relationships. Our emotions are our reactions to these thoughts and perceptions, and mirror our inner consciousness. They play a crucial role in our happiness and physical well-being.

Consciousness | Emotions | Future | Play | Reality | Wisdom | Happiness |

Ernest W. Watson

The best definition of wealth - the only true definition, I think - is the possession of whatever gives us happiness, contentment or a sense of one's significance in the scheme of things.

Contentment | Sense | Wealth | Wisdom | Think |

Joseph Mazzini, aka Giuseppe Mazzini

Life is a mission. Every other definition of life is false, and leads all who accept it astray. Religion, science, philosophy, though still at variance upon many points, all agree in this, that every existence is an aim.

Existence | Life | Life | Mission | Philosophy | Religion | Science |

Joseph Fort Newton

The one perfect definition of religion is The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

God | Life | Life | Man | Religion | Soul | God |

William Lyon Phelps

“The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.” This definition places happiness where it belongs - within and not without. The principle of happiness should be like the principle of virtue: it should not be dependent upon things, but be a part of personality.

Personality | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |