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

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

The best contribution one can make to humanity is to improve oneself.

Art | Humor | Light | Practice | Sense | Suffering | Art |

Victor Hugo

You have suffered greatly, poor mother. Oh! do not lament, you have now the portion of the elect. It is in this way that mortals become angels. It is not their fault; they do not know how to set about it otherwise. This hell from which you have come out is the first step towards Heaven. We must begin by that.

Fame | Life | Life | Light | Man | Mind | Story |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

Light |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent.

Beginning | Light | Mind | Nothing | Thinking | Time | Wife |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The earth holds the fool and holds the wise, endures that good and bad dwell (upon her); she keeps company with the boar, gives herself up to the wild hog.

Light | Wisdom |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Good thoughts inspire us to engage in good actions.

Good | Light | Will |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

It is all God, an expression of His Majesty. Derive joy from the springs of joy within you and without you; advance, do not stand still or recede.

Darkness | Light |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

True-knowledge brings good health, strength and long life to a man.

Light | Nothing | Teach | Will | World |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

This is the reason why we should try to bring unison in thoughts, words and deeds because it is of prime importance for the welfare of society as well as nation.

Doubt | Light | Lord |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The Supreme Lord God is Merciful to the meek; meditating in remembrance on Him, peace is obtained.

Light |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Dangerous! Vea laughed radiantly. What an utterly marvelous compliment! Why am I dangerous, Shevek? Why, because you know that in the eyes of men you are a thing, a thing owned, bought, sold. And so you think only of tricking the owners, of getting revenge.

Defense | Light | Power |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Outside the locked room is the landscape of time, in which the spirit may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift, improbable roads and cities of fidelity: a landscape inhabitable by human beings.

Earth | Hope | Light |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.

Birth | Death | Life | Life | Light |

Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

The Self is within all, and it is without all. – Isha Upanishad

Body | Consciousness | Day | Heaven | Light | Mortal | Self | World |

Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

Through purity of food comes purity of mind, through purity of mind comes a steady memory of Truth, and when one gets this memory one becomes free from all knots of the heart. – Chandogya Upanishad

Light |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

I have never found anywhere, in the domain of art, that you don't have to walk to. (There is quite an array of jets, buses and hacks which you can ride to Success; but that is a different destination.) It is a pretty wild country. There are, of course, roads. Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction, you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart.

Light |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile politely and shut my earlids. I am a writer, not a caterer. There are plenty of caterers. But what children most want and need is what we and they don't know they want and don't think they need, and only writers can offer it to them.

Light |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom not by force. It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.

Light |

Václav Havel

People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.

Light | Prison |