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

Samuel Alexander

Instinct has introduced us to the existence of a qualifying or tied conative tendency.

Distinguish | Perception |

Samuel Alexander

In the perception of a tree we can distinguish the act of experiencing, or perceiving, from the thing experienced, or perceived.

Mind | Perception |

Samuel Alexander

Theoretical acts of mind are such as subserve the continuance of the object before the mind without alteration of it.

Perception |

Samuel Alexander

Thus we have to recognize that a thing as perceived contains besides sensory elements other elements present to the mind only in ideal form.

Object | Perception |

Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

A serpent guards its head when its body is being crushed, and a wise monk guards his faith at all times, for this is the origin of his life.

Age | Future | Man | Mind | Perception | Wisdom | World |

Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

Just as fish perish from lack of water, so the meditative movements that God causes to blossom forth vanish from the heart of the monk who loves to dwell and pass his life in company with worldly men.

Life | Life | Man | Mind | Perception | Present |

John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom

Now if we are willing to examine the Scriptures in this way, carefully and systematically, we shall be able to obtain our salvation. If we unceasingly are preoccupied with them, we shall learn both correctness of doctrine and an upright way of life.

Deeds | Defense | Difficulty | God | Life | Life | Perception | Pleasure | Present | Reason | Regard | Time | Waste | Will | Words | Deeds | Loss | God | Learn |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences; of wishes for objects not remote, and grief or disappointments of no fatal consequence.

Nature | Perception | Pleasure | Rest |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Consciousness is an electrochemical function of the nervous system. Insert a new chemical into the brain and consciousness changes radically.

Perception |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.

People | Perception | Understand |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

Aye, indeed! Hast been brought up at the Abbey then. I could read it from thy reddened cheek and downcast eye, Hast learned from the monks, I trow, to fear a woman as thou wouldst a lazar-house. Out upon them! that they should dishonor their own mothers by such teaching. A pretty world it would be with all the women out of it.

Change | Nothing | Pain | Perception | Public | Suffering | Terror | World |

Stephan Jay Gould

Mythology is wondrous, a balm for the soul. But its problems cannot be ignored. At worst, it buys inspiration at the price of physical impossibility […]. At best, it purveys the same myopic view of history that made this most fascinating subject so boring and misleading in grade school as a sequential take of monarchs and battles.

Brotherhood | Equality | History | Hope | People | Perception | Think |

Stephen LaBerge

Have faith in your dreams and someday your rainbow will come smiling through. No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep believing, the dream that you wish will come true.

Perception | Right | Vice |

Stephan Jay Gould

Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. […] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.

Culture | Important | Life | Life | Perception | Question | Resolution | Thought | Truth | World | Thought |

Stephen LaBerge

Not all lucid dreams are useful but they all have a sense of wonder about them. If you must sleep through a third of your life, why should you sleep through your dreams, too?

Body | Dreams | Experience | Little | Perception | Present | Will | World | Understand |

Thomas Berry

The basic mood of the future might well be one of confidence in the continuing revelation that takes place in and through the Earth. If the dynamics of the Universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the Sun, and formed the Earth, if this same dynamism brought forth the continents and seas and atmosphere, if it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being the unnumbered variety of living beings, and finally brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process. Sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the Universe, we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture.

Alienation | Consciousness | Events | Experience | Meaning | Perception | Redemption | World |

Thomas Nashe

A traveler must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing.

Awareness | Desire | Ego | Experience | Good | Judgment | Order | Pain | Perception | Regard | Self | Suppression | Thought | Time | Wants | Awareness | Thought | Victim |

Thomas Reid

I cannot remember a thing that happened a year ago, without a conviction, as strong as memory can give, that I, the same identical person who now remember that event, did then exist.

Body | Perception |

Thomas Reid

Every man is conscious of a power to determine in things which he conceives to depend upon his determination. To this power we give the name of will.

Belief | Existence | Man | Perception | Reason |

William Blake

All Religions are One - THE ARGUMENT AS the true method of Knowledge is Experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences. This faculty I treat of: Principle 1 That the Poetic Genius is the True Man, and that the Body or Outward Form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius. Like-wise that the Forms of all things are derived from their Genius, which by the Ancients was call’d an Angel and Spirit and Demon. Principle 2 As all men are alike in Outward Form; so, and with the same infinite variety, all are alike in the Poetic Genius. Principle 3 No man can think, write, or speak from his heart, but he must intend Truth. Thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic Genius, adapted to the weaknesses of every individual. Principle 4 As none by travelling over known lands can find out the unknown; so, from already acquired knowledge, Man could not acquire more; therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists. Principle 5 The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation’s different reception of the Poetic Genius, which is everywhere call’d the Spirit of Prophecy. Principle 6 The Jewish and Christian Testaments are an original derivation from the Poetic Genius. This is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation. Principle 7 As all men are alike, tho’ infinitely various; so all Religions: and as all similars have one source the True Man is the source, he being the Poetic Genius.

Desire | Despair | Eternal | Man | Organic | Perception | Religion | Sense |