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

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.

Chance | Pleasure | Suffering | Will |

Václav Havel

All respected domestic and international organizations agree that your demands are justified. Therefore I wish you strength, endurance, courage and fortunate decisions.

Suffering |

Vance Havner

We are the salt of the earth, mind you, not the sugar. Our ministry is to truly cleanse and not just to change the taste.

Suffering |

Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

But O how slick and weasel-like is self-pride! Our learnedness creeps into our sermons with a clever quotation which adds nothing to God's glory, but a bit to our own. Our cleverness in business competition earns as much self-flattery as does the possession of the money itself. Our desire to be known and approved by others, to have heads nod approvingly about us behind our backs, and flattering murmurs which we can occasionally overhear, confirm the discernment in Alfred Adler's elevation of the superiority motive. Our status as "weighty Friends" gives us secret pleasures which we scarcely own to ourselves, yet thrive upon. Yes, even pride in our own humility is one of the devil's own tricks. But humility rests upon a holy blindedness, like the blindedness of him who looks steadily into the sun. For wherever he turns his eyes on earth, there he sees only the sun. The God-blinded soul sees naught of self, naught of personal degradation or of personal eminence, but only the Holy Will working impersonally through him, through others, as one objective Life and Power. But what trinkets we have sought after in life, the pursuit of what petty trifles has wasted our years as we have ministered to the enhancement of our own little selves! And what needless anguishes we have suffered because our little selves were defeated, were not flattered, were not cozened and petted! But the blinding God blots out this self and gives humility and true self-hood as wholly full of Him. For as He gives obedience so He graciously gives to us what measure of humility we will accept. Even that is not our own, but His who also gives us obedience. But the humility of the God-blinded soul endures only so long as we look steadily at the Sun. Growth in humility is a measure of our growth in the habit of the Godward-directed mind. And he only is near to God who is exceedingly humble. The last depths of holy and voluntary poverty are not in financial poverty, important as that is; they are in poverty of spirit, in meekness and lowliness of soul.

Body | Evil | Joy | Man | Mystery | Nature | Need | Obedience | Oblivion | Paradox | Soul | Suffering | World |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

He had lost that privilege of simple nature, the dissociation of love and pleasure. Pleasure was no longer as simple as eating; it was being complicated by love. Now was beginning that crazy loss of one's self, that neglect of everything but one's dramatic thoughts about the beloved, that feverish inner life all turning upon the [loved one].

Bitterness | Business | Capacity | Conduct | Distinction | Laughter | Love | Pride | Suffering | Tears | World | Youth | Youth | Business |

Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary

And a new philosophy emerged called quantum physics, which suggest that the individual’s function is to inform and be informed. You really exist only when you’re in a field sharing and exchanging information. You create the realities you inhabit.

Suffering | Wrong |

William Godwin

Either the nation whose tyrant you would destroy is ripe for the assertion and maintenance of its liberty, or it is not. If it be, the tyrant ought to be deposed with every appearance of publicity. Nothing can be more improper than for an affair, interesting to the general weal, to be conducted as if it were an act of darkness and shame. It is an ill lesson we read to mankind, when a proceeding, built upon the broad basis of general justice, is permitted to shrink from public scrutiny. The pistol and the dagger may as easily be made the auxiliaries of vice, as of virtue. To proscribe all violence, and neglect no means of information and impartiality, is the most effectual security we can have, for an issue conformable to reason and truth.

Force | Man | Mind | Office | Right | Sense | Suffering | Truth | Wrong |

William James

Faith isn't faith until it's all you're holding on to.

Apology | Man | Suffering | Will | World |

William Gouge

Reprehension is a kind of middle thing betwixt admonition and correction: it is sharpe admonition, but a milde correction. It is rather to be used because it may be a meanes to prevent strokes and blowes, especially in ingenuous and good natured children. [Blows are] the last remedy which a parent can use: a remedy which may doe good when nothing else can.

Eternal | Fear | Good | Intention | Man | Salvation | Soul | Suffering | Will | Truths |

William James

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

Birth | Indignation | Inferiority | Injustice | Injustice | Life | Life | Men | Nothing | Pain | Taste |

William Matthews

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.

Men | Suffering | Happiness |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

For the credit of virtue it must be admitted that the greatest evils which befall mankind are caused by their crimes.

Fear | Justice | Love | Men | Suffering |

Douglas William Jerrold

There is peace more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive of his material body.

Suffering |

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

These, characteristically different from one another and variously modified by the gunas, present to the intellect (buddhi) the whole purpose of the Self (purusha), illumining it like a lamp.

Experience | Nature | Pain | Self | Suffering |

Edwin Way Teale

In nature, there is less death and destruction than death and transmutation.

People | Suffering | World |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Pride is the master sin of the devil, and the devil is the father of lies.

Martyrs | Suffering | Tears |

Elihu Root

When a teacher of the future comes to point out to the youth of America how the highest rewards of intellect and devotion can be gained, he may say to them, not by subtlety and intrigue not by wire pulling and demagoguery not by the arts of popularity not by skill and shiftiness in following expediency but by being firm in devotion to the principles of manhood and the application of morals and the courage of righteousness in the public life of our country by being a man without guile and without fear, without selfishness, and with devotion to duty, devotion to his country.

Better | Character | Evil | Folly | Government | Ignorance | Indifference | Indolence | Knowledge | Law | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Nature | Responsibility | Suffering | Time | World | Wrong | Government |

Elias Canetti

Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.

Enthusiasm | Good | Indignation |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I watched them, thinking that little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women.

Addiction | Blame | Good | Irony | Looks | Love | Object | Obsession | Soul | Suffering |