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

Emmet Fox

The moment you catch yourself thinking a negative thought, you should reject it instantly. Immediately switch your attention to the Presence of God. Do not stop to say "good-bye" to the error thought, but break the connection instantly and occupy your mind with good; you will be surprised how many difficulties will begin to melt away out of your life. Indeed, we may say that when error presents itself to consciousness, the first five seconds are Golden. In the text quoted above, Jesus teaches this lesson in his own graphic way. The immediate application of these words was, of course, to the coming siege of Jerusalem, but the idea involved is eternal. The holy place is your consciousness, and the abomination of desolation is any negative thought, because a negative thought means belief in the absence of God at the point concerned. Those who are in Judea are those who believe that prayer does change things; to flee to the mountains means to pray, especially that quick switching of the thought to the Presence of God, which I have mentioned.

Belief | Depression | Example | Failure | God | Health | Law | Means | Metaphysics | Plenty | War | Will | Failure | Trouble | God | Think |

Emma Goldman

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism.

Future | Individual | Law | Means | Oppression | Present | Revolution | Parent |

Emmet Fox

The law of circulation is a Cosmic Law. That means that it is true everywhere and on all planes. The law is that constant rhythmical movement is necessary to health and harmony. Now the opposite of circulation is congestion, and it may be said that all sickness, in harmony, or trouble of any kind is really due to some form of congestion. If you think this subject out for yourself you will be fascinated to find how generally true it is, and in what unexpected places it appears. Much ill health is due to emotional congestion. This leads to congestion of the nerve, blood, and lymphatic fluids, producing disease. The depression belief under which the country labored for ten years was a case of congestion. There was plenty of raw material, machinery, and skill, and a very wide- spread demand for goods; but a case of congestion occurred! The dust bowl trouble and its allied misfortune, the floods, is, of course, an example of congestion. War itself is really due to frustrated circulation on many planes of existence. Some students of metaphysics shut their minds to the reception of new truth, and this always produces mental congestion and a failure to demonstrate. You should treat yourself two or three times a week for free circulation on all planes-by claiming that God is bringing this about.

Attention | Confidence | Control | Destiny | Force | Good | Law | Liberty | Means | Order | Thinking | Thought | Will | Govern | Learn | Think | Thought | Understand |

Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

But how to consider, the finite and the infinite in the fact of positing [se poser]? Is there a more or less perfect way of positing? What is, is. That there be birth and death in no way affects the absolute character of an affirmation that refers only to itself.

Anarchy | Troubles |

English Proverbs

A lawyer's opinion is worth nothing unless paid for.

Law |

Emmet Fox

One of the first rules on the spiritual path is that you must attend strictly to your own business and not interfere with that of others. Your neighbor's life is sacred and you have no right to try to manage it for him. Let him alone. God has given him free will and self-determination, so why should you interfere? Many well-meaning people are constantly "butting in"" to their neighbors' lives without invitation. They pretend to themselves that their only desire is to help, but this is self-deception. It is really a desire to interfere. Interference always does more harm than good. Actually those who mind other people's business always neglect their own. The man who wants to put your house in order has always made a failure of his own life. M.Y.O.B. Of course, this does not mean that you are not to help people whenever you can; in fact, you should make it a rule to try to do at least one kind act every day; but you must do it without interfering or encroaching. When in doubt, claim Divine Guidance. It is always right to give your neighbor the right thought. Under any circumstances it can only do good to "Golden Key" him when you think of him. Don't fuss - God is running the universe.

Boasting | Business | Confidence | Destroy | Important | Inspiration | Kill | Law | Nature | People | Plan | Secrecy | Talking | Will | World | Business | Child |

English Proverbs

The leopard does not change his spots.

Law |

English Proverbs

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

Good | Hell |

Erich Segal, fully Erich Wolf Segal

You don't know about falling off cliffs, Prep­pie,' she said. 'You never fell off one in your god­damn life.' 'Yeah,' I said, re­cov­er­ing the power of speech. 'When I met you.

Hell |

Ervin László

We rarely write the names of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon – each unique and surely of crucial significance – as here, honoring them with a capital letter. This may seem trivial, but our dislocation from nature is one of the most serious schisms in our dismembered psyche and probably the most urgent relationship we need to heal.

Action | Consciousness | Energy | Important | Intention | Law | Power |

Ferdinand Foch

My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat, situation excellent. I attack.

Freedom | Law | Life | Life | Sense | Unity |

Erich Segal, fully Erich Wolf Segal

He had spent most of his lifetime studying the art of medicine and realized now that he would never really understand its mysteries. For medicine is an eternal quest for reasons - causes that explain effects. Science cannot comprehend a miracle.

Family | Hell | Reason |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Home is where the heart is, home is where the fart is. Come let us fart in the home. There is no art in a fart. Still a fart may not be artless. Let us fart and artless fart in the home.

Hell | Means | Men | War | Will | Learn | Think |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?

Hell | Think |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I hope I am not for the killing, Anselmo was thinking. I think that after the war there will have to be some great penance done for the killing. If we no longer have religion after the war then I think there must be some form of civic penance organized that all may be cleansed from the killing or else we will never have a true and human basis for living. The killing is necessary, I know, but still the doing of it is very bad for a man and I think that, after all this is over and we have won the war, there must be a penance of some kind for the cleansing of us all.

Hell | Light | Reason |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors.

Hell | Nothing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Of all men the drunkard is the foulest. The thief when he is not stealing is like another. The extortioner does not practice in the home. The murderer when he is at home can wash his hands. But the drunkard stinks and vomits in this own bed and dissolves his organs in alcohol.

Hell |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death.

Dirty | Genius | Happy | Heart | Hell | Little | Love | Right | Afraid |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her?

Dirty | Happy | Hell | Little | Love | Right | Afraid |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

Hell | Life | Life | Think |