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

Raisa Orlova, fully Raisa Davydovna Orlova-Kopeleva

Beliefs and convictions reach out from the past, and they cannot be altered by fervent desire alone. They possess their own logic and illogic, their own organic existence, their own rhythm of development.

Convictions | Desire | Existence | Logic | Organic | Past |

Michael Dean Murdock

Within each heart beats a fervent desire to be needed, desired, and celebrated.

Desire | Heart |

Joseph Murphy

Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered prayer.

Desire | Experience | Fulfillment | Joy | Prayer | Reality | Will |

Anatoly Naumovich  Rybakov

Hatred is entrenched in human nature. It is as old as man, as old as man’s desire to expunge it. It slumbers in all of us. It can awaken at any time. I am not sure if we can eradicate hate from our hearts, but of this I am certain: It must always be our goal.

Desire | Hate | Human nature | Man | Nature | Time | Old |

Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin

The Buddha, that is now “Awakened One,” diagnosed the human condition in the following way. Life is out of balance and characterized by suffering because all things are impermanent, and yet we desire things as if they were permanent. We each view our own self as if it too were permanent and completely independent from our selves, and so we think of our self as competing for those things with other discrete selves. Everything that we desire will ultimately pass away – we cannot hold on to anything in the end, not even our own bodies and minds – so our inappropriate desires are frustrated and we suffer, only to be reborn again into anew life of desire and suffering. To break the cycle of rebirth (samsara), we must overcome our ignorance about the true nature of things, cut the root of desire, and give up attachment to self, for we are anatman, no-self.

Balance | Desire | Ignorance | Life | Life | Nature | Self | Suffering | Will | Following | Think |

Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL

Charity is above all a hymn of love. Real, pure love is the gift of oneself; it is the desire of diffusion and complete donation that is an essential part of goodness.

Charity | Desire | Love |

Shantideva NULL

The whole earth cannot satisfy the lust of the flesh; who can do its will? To him who longs for the impossible come guilt and bafflement of desire; but he who is utterly without desire has a happiness that ages not.

Desire | Earth | Guilt | Lust | Will | Happiness |

Charlene Spretnak

Without nonviolence - mind states of loving kindness and compassion - at the core of our societal construct, however, even the desire to protect and preserve can be manipulated in service to barbarism masquerading as idealism.

Barbarism | Compassion | Desire | Idealism | Kindness | Mind | Service |

Shantideva NULL

Eager to escape sorrow, men rush into sorrow; from desire of happiness they blindly slay their own happiness, enemies to themselves.

Desire | Men | Sorrow | Happiness |

Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

We desire unity of religion but not when purchased at the cost of the unity of truth.

Cost | Desire | Religion | Truth | Unity |

Ralph Waldo Trine

Many will receive great help, and many will be entirely healed by a practice somewhat after the following nature: Wit a mind at peace, and with a heart going out in love to all, go into the quiet of your own interior self, holding the thought - I am one with the Infinite Spirit of Life, the life of my life. I then as spirit, I a spiritual being, can in my own real nature admit of no disease. I now open my body, in w2hich disease has obtained a foothold, I open it fully to the inflowing tide of this Infinite Life, and it now, even now, is pouring in and coursing through my body, and the healing process is going on. Realize this so fully that you begin to feel a quickening and a warming glow imparted by the life forces to the body. Believe the healing process is going on. Believe it, and hold continually to it. Many people greatly desire a certain thing but expect something else. They have greater faith in the power of evil than in the power of good, and hence they remain ill.

Body | Desire | Disease | Evil | Faith | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Nature | Peace | People | Power | Practice | Quiet | Receive | Self | Spirit | Thought | Will | Wit | Following | Thought |

Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

I believe that the true welfare of man lies in the fulfillment of the Will of God; and that His will consists in men loving each other, and therefore behaving toward others as they desire that others should behave with them. I believe that the meaning of life of every man, therefore, lies only in the increase of love in himself; that this increase of love leads the individual man in this life toward greater and greater welfare; that after death it gives the greater welfare the more love there be in the man; and that, at the same time, more than anything else, it contributes to the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, i.e., to an order of life where the discord, deceit, and violence which now reign will be replaced by free agreement, truth, and brotherly love between men.

Death | Deceit | Desire | Earth | Fulfillment | God | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Meaning | Men | Order | Time | Truth | Will | God |

Kaushitaki Upanishad

Speech is; not what one should desire to understand. One should know the speaker.

Desire | Speech |

John Wesley

Conquer desire and you will conquer fear. But as long as you are a slave you must be a coward.

Desire | Fear | Will |

Alexander Yelchaninov

Faith is a free choice; wherever there is a desire of proof... there is no faith.

Choice | Desire | Faith | Free choice |

Henry Ford

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

Ability | Experience | Hope | Knowledge | Man | Money | Reserve | Security | Will | World |

Benjamin Franklin

Moderate your desire of victory over your adversary, and be pleased with the one over yourself.

Desire |