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

Norman Cousins

The most costly disease is not cancer or coronaries. The most costly disease is boredom - costly for both individual and society.

Disease | Individual | Society |

Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.

Beginning | Books | Determination | Freedom | Learning | Self | Self-determination | Wisdom |

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.

Disease |

Norman Vincent Peale

Emotional tranquillity, refusal to worry, the attitude of happiness, zest for life, keeping control, having grit and courage - these are important factors in physical health and long life.

Control | Courage | Health | Important | Life | Life | Tranquility | Worry |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

Watch your motives in everything. Both the greedy man and the yogi eat. But would you say that eating is a sin because it is often associated with greed? Sin lies in the thought, in the motive. The worldly man eats to satisfy his greed, and the yogi eats to keep his body well. There is a lot of difference.

Body | Greed | Man | Motives | Sin | Thought |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

No matter what his present state, man can change for the better through self-control, discipline, and following proper diet and health laws. Why do you think you cannot change? Mental laziness is the secret cause of all weakness.

Better | Cause | Change | Control | Diet | Discipline | Health | Laziness | Man | Present | Self | Self-control | Weakness | Following | Think |

Norman Vincent Peale

To practice the basic principles of good health, visualize yourself as sound, healthy and filled with vitality and boundless life of your Creator. Look upon yourself as the unique individual that you are. Get in harmony with the creative, life-giving, health-maintaining forces of the universe. Affirm peace, wholeness, and good health - and they will be yours.

Giving | Good | Harmony | Health | Individual | Life | Life | Peace | Practice | Principles | Sound | Unique | Universe | Wholeness | Will |

Norman Vincent Peale

There is not doubt in my mind that mental and spiritual health are the foundation of physical health, harmonious relationships, and a happy and successful life.

Doubt | Happy | Health | Life | Life | Mind |

Paul Tournier

Now, we shall be able to judge the extent of the spiritual undernourishment if we look at all these movements from another angle: not as errors but rather as attempts to find healing. I use this comparison: For a long time medical men combated fever as if it itself constituted the illness. Medicine today inclines rather to respect it, not only as a symptom of the disease but of the struggle of the organism against the disease. True, it is this struggle which makes it ill, and yet this very struggle is also the proof of its vitality and is the necessary way to healing.

Consequences | Diet | Disease | Disobedience | God | Inevitable | Intemperance | Men | Respect | Struggle | Thought | Time | Work | Wrong | Respect |

Plato NULL

Atheism is a disease of the soul, before it becomes an error of the understanding.

Atheism | Disease | Error | Soul | Understanding |

Philip James Bailey

Worthy books are not companions, they are solitudes; we lose ourselves in them, and all our cares.

Books |

Rachel Naomi Remen

The purpose of life is to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better. If life serves these purposes, then health serves these purposes and illness serves them as well, because illness is a part of life.

Better | Health | Life | Life | Love | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom | Learn |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the motion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary, but everything hath affinities infinite.

Books | Earth | Man | Nothing | Praise |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

Disease | Good | Will | Value |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Proverbs, like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions.

Books | Proverbs | Sacred |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this.

Character | Force | Health | Virtue | Virtue | Work |

Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen.

Conversation | Disease | Evil | People | Philosophy | Silence |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.

Books | Heart | Mind | Passion | Sensibility | Thought | Thought |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Books | Good | Heart | Mind | Passion | Sensibility | Thought | Thought |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions.

Absolute | Books | Literature | Proverbs | Reason | Sacred | Truth |