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

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

The subjects treated in the seventy verses are those of the entire science of sixty themes (shashtitantra), exclusive of illustrative tales, and devoid of polemical consideration of rival doctrines.

Nature | Self |

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

This is an intellectual creation, termed obstruction, infirmity, complacency and attainment. Through the disparity in influence of the gunas, its varieties are fifty.

Individual | Self | Intellect |

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

Through virtue there is ascent; through vice there is descent; through knowledge there is deliverance; there is bondage through the reverse.

Attainment | Rest | Self | Virtue | Virtue |

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

Celestial evolution is of eight kinds; the groveling species is fivefold; the human is single and specific in form. This, in brief, is material evolution.

Self |

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

So through study of principles (tattvas) arises the ultimate, undistracted, pure knowledge that neither I am, nor is anything mine nor am I embodied.

Nature | Self | Intellect |

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

When separation from the body takes place and Nature ceases to act, its purpose having been fulfilled, the Self attains to absolute and final emancipation (kaivalya).

Nature | Self |

Egyptian Proverbs

All organs work together in the functioning of the whole.

Self |

Elif Safak

How to deal with the goodness of their loved ones? Could be fought against goodness?

Chastity | Earth | Giving | Good | Guilt | Impression | Responsibility | Self | Truth | Wrong |

Elif Safak

We will continue to have killed a killer.

Beauty | Love | Self | Beauty | Think |

Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen

That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things.

Darkness | Light | Lying | Self |

Elizabeth Drew, aka Elizabeth Brenner

The inspired scribbler always has the gift for gossip in our common usage he or she can always inspire the commonplace with an uncommon flavor, and transform trivialities by some original grace or sympathy or humor or affection.

Consciousness | Meaning | Self | Writing | Propaganda |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness - that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace.

Commitment | Good | Mind | Self | Leader |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Well, I always tried to look nice and be feminine even in the worst tragedies and crisis, there's no reason to add to everyone's misery by looking miserable yourself. That's my philosophy. This is why I always wore makeup and jewelry into the jungle-nothing too extravagant, but maybe just a nice gold bracelet and some earrings, a little lipstick, good perfume. Just enough to show that I still had my self-respect.

Little | Self | Will | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

What a large number of factors constitute a single human being! How very many layers we operate on, and how very many influences we receive from our minds, our bodies, our histories, our families, our cities, our souls and our lunches!

Little | Self | Think |

Elizabeth Lesser

Meditation practice is like piano scales, basketball drills, ballroom dance class. Practice requires discipline; it can be tedious; it is necessary. After you have practiced enough, you become more skilled at the art form itself. You do not practice to become a great scale player or drill champion. You practice to become a musician or athlete. Likewise, one does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living.

Attention | Divinity | Longing | Meditation | Mysticism | Nature | Religion | Self | Spirituality | Time | Friends |

Elizabeth Gilbert

We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses--one foot is on the horse called fate, the other on the horse called free will. And the question you have to ask every day is--which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it's not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?

Self |

Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

Too much principle is often more harmful than too little.

Self | Teach | Learn |

Ellen Key, fully Ellen Karolina Sofia Key

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

History | Right | Self |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

You are a dog in the manger, Cathy, and desire no one to be loved but yourself!

Change | Eternal | Existence | Little | Love | Self | Sense | Time | Universe | Will |

Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved. But love goes beyond the beloved... The possibility of the Other appearing as an object of a need while retaining his alterity, or again, the possibility of enjoying the Other... this simultaneity of need and desire, or concupiscence and transcendence... constitutes the originality of the erotic which, in this sense, is the equivocal par excellence.

Absence | Pleasure | Self |