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

William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet

The universe may be conceived as a polygon of a thousand or a hundred thousand sides or facets - and each of these sides or facets may be conceived as representing one special mode of existence. Now, of these thousand sides or modes, all may be equally essential, but three or four only may be turned towards us or be analogous to our organs.

Existence | Universe | Wisdom |

Hermetica NULL

God then, is the source of all things; the Aeon is the power of God; and the work of the Aeon is the Kosmos which never came into being, but is ever coming into being, by the action of the Aeon, and that which olds the universe together is the Aeon.

Action | God | Power | Universe | Wisdom | Work |

A. C. Harwood

There is one type of feeling which is above all important to foster in childhood. Children have naturally an abundant faculty for wonder and reverence. There are so many books, so many radio and television hours, so many encyclopedias and, alas, so many teachers whose aim is to import knowledge quickly and easily without any element of that faculty which the Greeks said was the beginning of philosophy – Wonder. It is strange that an age which has discovered so many marvels in the universe should be so conspicuously lacking in the sense of wonder.

Age | Beginning | Books | Childhood | Children | Important | Knowledge | Philosophy | Reverence | Sense | Television | Universe | Wisdom | Wonder |

Victor Hugo

The reduction of the universe to a single being, the dilation of a single being as far as God, such is love.

God | Love | Universe | Wisdom |

Ta-chu Hui-Hai

When you stop thinking that things have a past or future, and that they come or go, then in the whole universe there won't be a single atom that is not your own treasure. All you have to do is look into your own mind; then the marvelous reality will manifest itself at all times. Don't search for the truth with your intellect. Don't search at all. The nature of the mind is intrinsically pure.

Future | Mind | Nature | Past | Reality | Search | Thinking | Truth | Universe | Will | Wisdom |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The aging man of the middle twentieth century lives, not in the public world of atomic physics and conflicting ideologies, of welfare states and supersonic speed, but in his strictly private universe of physical weakness and mental decay.

Man | Public | Universe | Weakness | Wisdom | World |

Margaret Jenkins

Every pupil you have carries in his mind or heart or conscience a bit of you. Your influence, your example, your ideas and values keep marching on - how far into the future and into what realms of our spacious universe you will never know.

Conscience | Example | Future | Heart | Ideas | Influence | Mind | Universe | Will | Wisdom |

R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing

When the Copernican Revolution superseded the ancient Polemic world view, the earth took its rightful place as one planet among many. Man was no longer the center of the universe and though his self-image was deflated, he grew in maturity. In the same way, we must take our rightful place in nature - not as its self-centered and profligate "master" with the divine right of kings to exploit and despoil, but as one species living in harmony with the whole.

Earth | Exploit | Harmony | Man | Nature | Revolution | Right | Self | Universe | Wisdom | World |

Walter Savage Landor

Taken as a whole, the universe is absurd.

Absurd | Universe | Wisdom |

Maurice Nicoll

The universe is infinite response. Mentally understood, it is all possibilities. Every point of view is possible, and because it ‘exists’ it is right... The universe gives more than we give... Unless one sees the world differently, unless new ideas touch our consciousness we cannot rise to any apprehension of the second system. To all that we know naturally we must add something, and in this volume this addition is taken in terms of adding first the dimension of Time to our own lives and considering what this means for oneself.

Consciousness | Ideas | Means | Right | System | Time | Universe | Wisdom | World |

Maurice Nicoll

To live unto eternity is to live unto aeon, unto unity, unto wholeness, completeness, unto the integration of all the life. And this is now. The enemy to now is the illusion of passing-time... When we reach the now the world is turned the other way round. We are at the centre of things. The responsibility is ours. Had we now in our lives we would cease to blame.... Universe evolves out of one’s own mind... because the WORLD is a series of possible mental transformations

Blame | Enemy | Eternity | Illusion | Integration | Life | Life | Mind | Responsibility | Time | Unity | Universe | Wholeness | Wisdom | World |

Maurice Nicoll

What is the standpoint of materialism?... We look outwards (via the senses) for the explanation and cause of everything. We start from phenomena as absolute truth... Materialism gives sense and physical matter priority over mind or idea... The customary standpoint of scientific materialism is that primary matter is dead - and the universe is dead and nature is dead - and a dead nature can, of course, aim at nothing. It cannot be teleological.

Absolute | Cause | Materialism | Mind | Nature | Nothing | Phenomena | Sense | Truth | Universe | Wisdom |

Guiseppe Mazzini

Music is the harmonious voice of creation, an echo of the invisible world, one note of the divine concord which the entire universe is destined one day to sound.

Day | Music | Sound | Universe | Wisdom | World |

Clifford Odets

In my opinion, the universe is governed by a committee; one Man couldn't have made so many mistakes.

Man | Opinion | Universe | Wisdom |

Thomas Paine

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

Man | Principles | Science | System | Universe | Wisdom |