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

Pat Buchanan, fully Patrick Joseph "Pat" Buchanan

We may deny the existence of ethnonationalism, detest it, condemn it. But this creator and destroyer of empires and nations is a force infinitely more powerful than globalism, for it engages the heart. Men will die for it. Religion, race, culture and tribe are the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse.

Culture | Existence | Force | Men | Nations | Will |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

When you are talking to others, hold the eyes of the one you are talking to, and speak with all the force of truth and the love of God behind your words. And when you shake hands, do so consciously, so that you give the magnetism of your sincere friendship. Try to help that person. Be positive and develop your own spiritual magnetism, and you will have the power to change others. With the eyes you can convey that magnetism. Just look at the one you want to help, and think, "God's blessing is flowing through me." Never feel you are the doer.

Change | Force | God | Love | Power | Talking | Truth | Will | God |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

No action is ever an isolated event. Always, it invites from the universe a reaction that corresponds exactly to the type and the force of energy behind the deed.

Action | Energy | Force | Universe |

Patrick Henry

Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Beside, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of Nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.

Cause | Enemy | Force | God | Will | God | Friends |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

Lust applies to the abuse of any or all of the senses in the pursuit of pleasure or gratification. Through the sense of sight man may lust after material objects; through the sense of hearing, he craves the sweet, slow poison of flattery, and vibratory sounds as of voices and music that rouse his material nature; through the lustful pleasure of smell he is enticed toward wrong environments and actions; lust for food and drink causes him to please his taste at the expense of health; through the sense of touch he lusts after inordinate physical comfort and abuses the creative sex impulse. Lust also seeks gratification in wealth, status, power, domination—all that satisfies the "I, me, mine" in the egotistical man. Lustful desire is egotism, the lowest rung of the ladder of human character evolution. By the force of its insatiable passion, karma loves to destroy one's happiness, health, brain power, clarity of thought, memory, and discriminative judgment.

Abuse | Character | Comfort | Desire | Destroy | Force | Lust | Man | Music | Pleasure | Sense | Taste | Wrong |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

Pranayama is derived fron two Sanskrit words - prana (life) and ayama (control). Pranayama is therefore life control and not "breath control." The broadest meaning of the word prana is force of energy. In this sense, the universe is filled with prana; all creation is a manifestation of force, a play of force. Everything that was, is, or shall be, is nothing but the different modes of expression of the universal force. The universal prana is thus the Para-Prakiti (pure Nature), immanent energy or force which is derived from the infinite Spirit, and which permeates and sustains the universe.

Control | Energy | Force | Life | Life | Meaning | Nothing | Play | Universe | Words |

Patti Smith, fully Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. For nothing is more precious than the life force and may the love of that force guide you as you go.

Art | Balance | Force | Life | Life | Love | Nothing | Art |

Paul Brunton, born Hermann Hirsch, wrote under various pseudonyms including Brunton Paul, Raphael Meriden and Raphael Delmonte

If outer events bring him to a position where he can bear them no longer and force him to cry out to the higher power in helplessness for relief or if inner feelings bring humiliation and recognition of his dependence on that power, this crushing of the ego may open the door to grace.

Dependence | Ego | Events | Feelings | Force | Position | Power |

Paul Hawken

The question that continues to reverberate to this day is whether human rights trump the rights of business, or vice versa, a conflict that has been ongoing for more than three hundred years... From an economic viewpoint, what citizens have been trying to do for two hundred years is to force business to pay full freight, to internalize their costs to society instead of externalizing them onto a river, a town, a single patient, or a whole generation.

Business | Day | Force | Question | Rights | Society | Society | Business | Vice |

Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend

Is it not a fact that a learned physician is better equipped to diagnose and to cure an illness than a layman or the medicine-man of a primitive society? Is it not a fact that epidemics and dangerous individual diseases have disappeared only with the beginning of modern medicine? Must we not admit that technology has made tremendous advances since the rise of modern science? And are not the moon-shots a most and undeniable proof of its excellence? These are some of the questions which are thrown at the impudent wretch who dares to criticize the special positions of the sciences. The questions reach there polemical aim only if one assumes that the results of science which no one will deny have arisen without any help from non-scientific elements, and that they cannot be improved by an admixture of such elements either. "Unscientific" procedures such as the herbal lore of witches and cunning men, the astronomy of mystics, the treatment of the ill in primitive societies are totally without merit. Science alone gives us a useful astronomy, an effective medicine, a trustworthy technology. One must also assume that science owes its success to the correct method and not merely to a lucky accident. It was not a fortunate cosmological guess that led to progress, but the correct and cosmologically neutral handling of data. These are the assumptions we must make to give the questions of the polemical force they are supposed to have. Not a single one of them stands up to a closer examination.

Beginning | Better | Cunning | Force | Individual | Method | Science | Success | Technology | Will |

Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend

If the world is an aggregate of relatively independent regions, then any assumption of universal laws is false and a demand for universal norms tyrannical: only brute force (or seductive deception) can then bend the different moralities so that they fit the prescriptions of a single ethical system. And indeed, the idea of universal laws of nature and society arose in connection with a life-and-death battle: the battle that gave Zeus the power over the Titans and all other gods and thus turned his laws into the laws of the universe.

Battle | Force | Nature | Power | Society | World | Society |

Paulo Coelho

Love is a disease no one wants to get rid of. Those who catch it never try to get better, and those who suffer do not wish to be cured… Love is a force that will never be subdued. If we try to control it, love will destroy us. If we try to keep it, love will enslave us. If we try to understand it, love will leave us in confusion… Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows… Love is always new. No matter that we love one, two, ten times in life we are always faced with a situation we do not know. Love can take us to hell or to paradise, but always leads somewhere. We must accept it, as is the food of our existence. If we are negative we, seeing starve the tree branches laden life, without courage to reach out and pick fruit. It is necessary to find love where you are, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness. Because the moment we left in search of love, love comes to us also. And save us.

Control | Courage | Destroy | Disease | Force | Hell | Life | Life | Love | Means | Search | Wants | Will | Understand |

Paulo Coelho

Love is much like a dam; if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current… Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -and never explained. Love is such a thing. Love is the most powerful love can manifest its weakness. Anyway, if my love is real (and not just how to distract themselves, deceive themselves, and so for the time-something that always seems to stand still in the city-well lapse) , then freedom will conquer jealousy and any pain that it caused me, because pain is a natural part of the process. Anyone who has played sports knows this: if you want to achieve your goals, you must be prepared to undergo the discomfort every day, that is the pain and discomfort. Initially, it can be devastating and gradually fade motivated action, but at the same time you find it again is a receptor during the good things, and when that time comes, if you do not feel pain, you will have a feeling that the exercise does not work as expected.

Control | Force | Freedom | Good | Jealousy | Life | Life | Love | Pain | Time | Will | Work |

Paulo Coelho

It includes everything. If there is suffering, then it is best to accept it, because it won't go away because you pretend it is not there. If there is joy, then it is best to accept that too, even though you are afraid it might end someday. Some people can only relate to life through sacrifice and renunciation. Some people only feel part of humanity when they think they are happy… It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over. Slowly, I began to realize that I could not go back and force things to be as they once were: those two years, which up until then had seemed an endless inferno, were now beginning to show me their true meaning.

Beginning | Force | Humanity | Important | Life | Life | Past | People | Sacrifice | Afraid | Think |

Paulo Coelho

At that moment it seemed to him that time stood still and the soul of the world surged within him. When he looked into her dark eyes and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke. The language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well. She smiled, and that was certainly an omen. The omen he had been awaiting without even knowing he was for all his life. The omen he sought to find in his sheep and in his books. In the crystals and in the silence of the desert… It was the pure language of the world. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life. And that, with no need for words she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it, than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way never learned the universal language. Because when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you. Whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love and makes a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one's dreams would have no meaning.

Dreams | Earth | Force | Future | Important | Knowing | Language | Love | Need | Parents | Past | People | Silence | Soul | Time | Understanding | Universe | Woman | Words | World | Understand |

Paulo Coelho

No one should let themselves get used to anything… No one wants their life thrown into chaos at all. That's why many people holding back the threat level under control, and that's the way they are able to prop up a house or structure has rotted. They are the architects of innovation. Others think the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought; they hope to find in the passion that the method solves all their problems. They force people to take responsibility for their happiness, and blame those people because they were not happy. They are in an excited state because of the magic has happened or depressed because things just do not expect the destruction of all. Alkali keep the passion, or surrender it blindly-way, less destructive The most extreme? I do not know.

Blame | Force | Hope | Life | Life | Magic | Method | Passion | People | Responsibility | Surrender | Wants | Think |

Paulo Freire

It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the 'rejects of life.' It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them.

Force | Humanity | Love | Power |

Paulo Coelho

It's what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their destiny... It's a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your destiny. It prepares your spirit and you will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth.

Desire | Destiny | Force | Mission | Soul | Spirit | Time | Truth | Will | Afraid |

Pauline Kael

Our emotions rise to meet the force coming from the screen, and they go on rising throughout our movie-going lives.

Emotions | Force |

Paulo Coelho

Free again, but it's just a feeling; freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit yourself to what is best for you… Freedom continues to be the thing I prize most in the world. Of course, this has led me to drink wines I did not like, to do things I should not have done and which I will not do again; it has left scars on my body and on my soul, it has meant hurting certain people, although I have since asked their forgiveness, when I realized that I could do absolutely anything except force another person to follow me in my madness, in my lust for life. I don’t regret the painful times; I bear my scars like medals. I know that freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and a smile, even when that smile is dimmed by tears… Freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and a smile, even when that smile is dimmed with tears… Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit myself to - what is best for me… Absolute freedom does not exist: there is only the freedom to choose something from that moment onwards to feel bound by its own decision.

Ability | Absence | Absolute | Body | Force | Freedom | Lust | Pleasure | Regret | Smile | Will |