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

Kinza M. Hirai, fully Kinza Ringe M. Hirai

Nirvana is interpreted by Western nations as the actual annihilation of human desire or passion; but this is a mistake. Nirvana is nothing else than universal reason.

Character | Desire | Mistake | Nations | Nothing | Passion | Reason |

Carl Holmes

A happy life is made up of little things in which smiles and small favors are given habitually. A gift sent, a letter written, a call made, a recommendation given, transportation provided, a cake made, a book lent, a check sent - things which are done without hesitation. Kindness isn't sacrifice so much as it is being considerate for the feelings of others, sharing happiness, the unselfish thought, the spontaneous and friendly act, forgetfulness of our own present interests.

Character | Feelings | Forgetfulness | Happy | Kindness | Life | Life | Little | Present | Sacrifice | Thought |

John Haynes Holmes

As the very atoms of the earth and the stars of the sky seek harmony with the system which binds them in a cosmic unity, so the souls of men seek harmony with the Spirit which makes them one.

Character | Earth | Harmony | Men | Spirit | System | Unity | Wisdom |

Stephen Grellet, born Étienne de Grellet du Mabillier

In the world men must be dealt with according to what they are, and not to what they ought to be; and the great art of life is to find out what they are, and act with them accordingly.

Art | Character | Life | Life | Men | World | Art |

Zane Grey Orig. name Pearl Grey

To bear up under loss; to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief; to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close; to resist disease and evil men and base instincts; to hate hate and to love love; to go on when it would seem good to die; to look up with unquenchable faith in something ever more about to be - that is what any man can do, and be great.

Anger | Bitterness | Character | Defeat | Disease | Evil | Faith | Good | Grief | Hate | Love | Man | Men | Smile | Tears | Weakness |

Robert A. Heinlein, fully Robert Anson Heinlein, pen name for Anson MacDonald

Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business.

Ability | Business | Character | Mind | Wisdom |

Lynn Hill, aka Lynn Hill-Raffa

The purpose of my existence as I climb is to adapt my personal dimensions to the environment around me at each moment. I become an active player sharing some of the responsibility for my own destiny, achieving a heightened sense of awareness and seeing the direct result of my efforts; either I fall or I reach the top. But the meaning does not come from conquering the rock. Purpose comes from moving in harmony with nature, rather than destroying it or altering it for my immediate satisfaction. What gives life meaning is the fulfillment of directing energy in a way that brings a higher order to, and harmony with, the environment I live in... The ultimate meaning of our lives is relative to how much we have given to others. The ultimate meaning of our lives is connected with death... I would like to know that I have inspired people to go beyond self-limiting stereotypes to experience and nurture the true richness of their passions.

Awareness | Character | Death | Destiny | Energy | Existence | Experience | Fulfillment | Harmony | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Self | Sense | Awareness |

Thomas Hobbes

To this war of every man, against every man, this is also consequent that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice, and injustice, are none of the faculties neither of the body, nor mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, as well as his sense, and passions. They are qualities, that relate to men in society, not in solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thing distinct; but only that to be every man’s, that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it.

Body | Character | Force | Fraud | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Law | Man | Men | Mind | Nothing | Power | Qualities | Right | Sense | Society | Solitude | War | World | Wrong |

Samuel Holdheim

It is only the attainment of the higher level of inner religious life which justifies an abandonment of our religious forms, that on a lower level are both a duty and a necessity.

Attainment | Character | Duty | Life | Life | Necessity |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.

Chance | Character | Folly | Good | Life | Life | Nothing | Rights | Sense | Wisdom |

Stephan Jay Gould

The center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.

Character | Human nature | Kindness | Nature |

Oscar Hammerstein II, fully Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hamerstein II

Why you are born and why you are living depend entirely on what you are getting out of this world and what you are giving to it. I cannot prove that this is a balance of mathematical perfection, but my own observation of life leads me to the conclusion that there is a very real relationship, both quantitatively and qualitatively, between what you contribute and what you get out of this world.

Balance | Character | Giving | Life | Life | Observation | Perfection | Relationship | World |

Heinrich Heine

Whether a revolution succeeds or miscarries, men of great hearts will always be its victims.

Character | Men | Revolution | Will |

Thomas Hobbes

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Character | Desire | Fear | Life | Life | Mind | Sense | Tranquility |

Joel Hawes

A good name lost is seldom regained. When character is gone, all is gone, and one of the richest jewels of life is lost forever.

Character | Good | Life | Life |

Claude-Adrien Helvétius

The men of sense, the idols of the shallow, are very inferior to the men of passions. It is the strong passions which, rescuing us from sloth, impart to us that continuous and earnest attention necessary to great attention.

Attention | Character | Men | Sense | Sloth |

Leigh Mitchell Hodges

Life begins each morning... Each night of life is a wall between to-day and the past. Each morning is the open door to a new world - new vistas, new aims, new tryings.

Aims | Character | Day | Life | Life | Past | World |

Gilbert L. Guffin

It is ever true that the life one lives speaks more loudly than the words one utters.

Character | Life | Life | Words |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than form principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.

Character | Good | Impulse | Men | Think |