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

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Young love-making - that gossamer web!... The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.

Character | Life | Life | Love | Trust | Yearnings |

J. Stanley Durkee

You can't stop the people from thinking - but you can start them.

Character | People | Thinking |

Abba Eban, born Aubrey Solomon Meir Eban

The vital force in business life is the honest desire to serve. Business, it is said, is the science of service. He profits most who serves best. At the very bottom of the wish to render service must be honesty of purpose, and, as I go along through life, I see more and more that honesty in word, thought, and work means success. It spells a life worth living and in business clean success.

Business | Character | Desire | Force | Honesty | Life | Life | Means | Purpose | Purpose | Science | Service | Success | Thought | Work | Worth | Business |

Tyron Edwards

It is the fixed law of the universe, that little things are but parts of the great. The grass does not spring up full grown, by eruptions: it rises by an increase so noiseless and gentle, as not to disturb an angel's ear - perhaps to be invisible to an angel's eye. The rain does not fall in masses, but in drops, or even in the breath-like moisture of the fine mist. The planets do not leap from end to end of their orbits, but inch by inch, and line by line, it is that they circle the heavens. Intellect, feeling, habit, character, all become what they are through the influence of little things. And in morals and religion, it is by little things - by little influences acting on us, or seemingly little decisions made by us, that everyone of us is going, not by leaps, yet surely by inches, either to life or death eternal.

Character | Death | Eternal | Habit | Influence | Law | Life | Life | Little | Religion | Universe |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

Angels | Character | Life | Life | Nothing | Past |

Arthur Powell Davies

Life is not the creature of circumstance. Indeed, in the whole universe of everything that is, life alone, life by its very nature, is the antagonist of circumstance... If there is any one thing that is utterly clear about the nature of life, it is that it was meant to master circumstance. The spirit conquers all things when the spirit wills it, and no excuse remains when we fail to live as we wish.

Character | Life | Life | Nature | Spirit | Universe | Wills |

John Dewey

Search for a single, inclusive good is doomed to failure. Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situation of experience its own full and unique meaning.

Character | Experience | Failure | Good | Life | Life | Meaning | Search | Unique | Happiness |

Thomas Dreier

The life each of us lives is the life within the limits of our own thinking. To have life more abundant, we must think in the limitless terms of abundance.

Abundance | Character | Life | Life | Thinking | Think |

Henry Van Dyke, fully Henry Jackson Van Dyke

Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.

Character | People | Afraid |

Sara Davidson

The ability to laugh at life is right at the top, with love and communication in the hierarchy of our needs. Humor has much to do with pain; it exaggerates the anxieties and absurdities we feel, so that we gain distance and through laughter, relief.

Ability | Character | Humor | Laughter | Life | Life | Love | Pain | Right | Wisdom |

Madame Deluzy, Luzy Dorothee

Some people regret that they have poor memories. Alas! it is much more difficult to forget.

Character | People | Regret |

Walter Duranty

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

Character | People | Wishes | Trouble | Think |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Life is very difficult. It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feelings; but then such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us - the ties that have made others depend on us - and would cut them in two.

Character | Feelings | Life | Life | Right | Wisdom |

Emil Fackenheim, fully Emil Ludwig Fackenheim

A life shot through with the tragedy of death is better - more human, more heroic - than a life of meaninglessness, even though pleasurable and comfortable.

Better | Character | Death | Life | Life | Tragedy |

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

The Indians were religious from the first moments of life. From the moment of the mother’s recognition that she had conceived to the end of the child’s second year of life, which was the ordinary duration of lactation, it was supposed by us that the mother’s spiritual influence was supremely important. Her attitude and secret meditations must be such to instill into the receptive soul of the unborn child the love of the Great Mystery and a sense of connectedness with all creation. Silence and isolation are the rule of life for the expectant mother... Silence, love, reverence - this is the trinity of first lessons, and to these she later adds generosity, courage and chastity.

Character | Chastity | Courage | Generosity | Important | Influence | Isolation | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Mystery | Reverence | Rule | Sense | Silence | Soul | Child |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

Envy comes from focusing on the few moments of good fortune in the life of another person, while ignoring his years of misfortune.

Character | Envy | Fortune | Good | Life | Life | Misfortune |

Dubner Magid, name for Rabbi Jacob ben wolf Krantz

A person whose major goal in life is spiritual growth feels love for anyone who suggests ways he can improve.

Character | Growth | Life | Life | Love |