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

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.

Character | Impartiality | Soul | Will |

Thomas Crombie

No man is free who is not master of his soul and controller of his spirit.

Character | Man | Soul | Spirit |

Walter Duranty

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

Character | People | Wishes | Trouble | Think |

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new, sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone!

Character | Earth | Silence | Soul |

Albert Einstein

Whoever remains unmoved, whoever cannot contemplate or know the deep shudder of the soul in enchantment, might just as well be dead for he has already closed his eyes upon life.

Character | Life | Life | Soul |

Demophilus NULL

Watch, for the idleness of the soul approaches death.

Character | Death | Idleness | Soul |

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

The Indians were religious from the first moments of life. From the moment of the mother’s recognition that she had conceived to the end of the child’s second year of life, which was the ordinary duration of lactation, it was supposed by us that the mother’s spiritual influence was supremely important. Her attitude and secret meditations must be such to instill into the receptive soul of the unborn child the love of the Great Mystery and a sense of connectedness with all creation. Silence and isolation are the rule of life for the expectant mother... Silence, love, reverence - this is the trinity of first lessons, and to these she later adds generosity, courage and chastity.

Character | Chastity | Courage | Generosity | Important | Influence | Isolation | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Mystery | Reverence | Rule | Sense | Silence | Soul | Child |

Tyron Edwards

We never reach our ideals, whether of mental or moral improvement, but the thought of them shows us our deficiencies, and spurs us on to higher and better things.

Better | Character | Ideals | Improvement | Thought | Thought |

Y. Eibeschuetz

A person’s soul has a spark of divinity. Forgetting one’s lofty identity, one might pick up major faults and bad habits. Therefore remember at all times that you are a child of the great King and it is not befitting to act in a lowly and degrading manner.

Character | Divinity | Soul | Child |

Joseph Marie, baron de Gérando, born Joseph Marie Degérando, also Joseph-Marie de Gérando

Philosophers have very justly remarked that the only solid instruction is that which the pupil brings from his own depths; that the true instruction is not that which transmits notions wholly formed, but that which renders him capable of forming for himself good opinions. That which they have said in regard to the intellectual faculties applies equally to the moral faculties. There is for the soul a spontaneous culture, on which depends all the real progress in perfection.

Character | Culture | Good | Perfection | Progress | Regard | Soul | Instruction |

Philip Doddridge

He is the wisest and happiest man who, by constant attention of thought discovers the greatest opportunity of doing good, and breaks through every opposition that he may improve these opportunities.

Attention | Character | Good | Man | Opportunity | Opposition | Thought | Thought |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I am fully convinced that the soul is indestructible, and that its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.

Character | Eternity | Light | Reality | Soul | Will | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Pain and pleasure, good and evil, come to us from unexpected sources. It is not there where we have gathered up our brightest hopes, that the dawn of happiness breaks. It is not there where we have glanced our eye with affright, that we find the deadliest gloom. What should this teach use? To bow to the great and only Source of light, and live humbly and with confiding resignation.

Character | Dawn | Evil | Gloom | Good | Light | Pain | Pleasure | Resignation | Teach | Happiness |

Immanual Hermann Fichte

Our system of thought and opinion, is often the only history of our heart. Men do not so much will according to their reason, as reason according to their will.

Character | Heart | History | Men | Opinion | Reason | System | Thought | Will | Thought |

Joseph Fletcher, fully Joseph Francis Fletcher

Man is his own star, and that soul that can be honest, is the only perfect man.

Character | Man | Soul |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Simplicity is the straightforwardness of a soul which refuses itself any reaction with regard to itself or its deeds. This virtue differs from and surpasses sincerity. We see many people who are sincere without being simple. They do not wish to be taken for other than what they are; but they are always fearing lest they should be taken for what they are not.

Character | Deeds | People | Regard | Simplicity | Sincerity | Soul | Virtue | Virtue |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The dream, which fulfills its wishes by following the short regressive path, has thereby simply preserved for us a specimen of the primary method of operation of the psychic apparatus, which has been abandoned as inappropriate. What once prevailed in the waking state, when our psychic life was still young and inefficient, seems to have been banished into our nocturnal life; just as we still find in the nursery those discarded primitive weapons of adult humanity, the bow and arrow.

Character | Humanity | Life | Life | Method | Weapons | Wishes | Following |

Henry Fielding

A strenuous soul hates cheap success.

Character | Soul | Success |