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

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Immortality is participation in the eternal now of the divine Ground: survival is persistence in one of the forms of time. Immortality is the result of total deliverance.

Character | Eternal | Immortality | Persistence | Survival | Time |

William James

The problem with the man is less what act he shall now choose to do, than what being he shall now resolve to become.

Character | Man |

Washington Irving

A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles.

Character | Heart |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

Consumption, celebrity and the quest for perfection in this world are all subject to the law of diminishing returns: each successive acquisition and achievement will mean less than the one before. Diminishing returns are finally leading to diminished expectations about the promise of finding happiness without caring for our souls. Perhaps we are now ready to reject the hucksters of materialisms that have lured us down so many dead ends, and start again on the road that will lead us back to God.

Achievement | Character | Ends | God | Law | Perfection | Promise | Will | World | Happiness |

William Ralph Inge

As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.

Character | Heart | Man |

David Hume

Reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood. Truth or falsehood consists in an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact. Whatever, therefore, is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason. Now ‘tis evident our passions, volitions, and actions, are not susceptible of any such agreement or disagreement; being original facts and realities, complete in themselves, and implying no reference to other passions, volitions, and actions. ‘Tis impossible, therefore, they can be pronounced either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason.

Character | Disagreement | Discovery | Existence | Falsehood | Ideas | Object | Reason | Truth | Discovery |

Victor Hugo

As the purse is emptied, the heart is filled.

Character | Heart |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Knowledge of what is happening now does not determine the event. What is ordinarily called God’s foreknowledge is in reality a timeless now-knowledge, which is compatible with the freedom of the human creature’s will in time.

Character | Freedom | God | Knowledge | Reality | Time | Will |

Maria Jane Jewsbury

Love is the purification of the heart from self; it strengthens and ennobles the character; gives higher motive and nobler aim to every action of life, and makes both man and woman strong, noble, and courageous. The power to love truly and devotedly is the nobles gift with which a human being can be endowed; but it is a sacred fire that must not be burned to idols.

Action | Character | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Power | Sacred | Self | Woman |

Thomas Jefferson

An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is the second.

Character | Heart | Knowing |

Gloria D. Karpinski

We draw to ourselves what we really want, not what we think we want. It’s not a bad idea to ask ourselves now and then, Whose truth are we living? Whose dream are we dreaming?

Character | Truth | Think |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

I have often seen individuals who simply outgrow a problem which had destroyed others. This ‘outgrowing’, revealed itself on further experience to be the raising of the level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through the widening of his view, the insoluble problem, lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out in contrast to a new and strong life-tendency. It was not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so became different itself. What, on a lower level, had led the wildest conflicts and emotions full of panic, viewed from the higher level of the personality, now seemed like a storm in the valley seen from a high mountain top. This does not mean that the thunderstorm is robbed of its reality; it means that instead of being in it, one is now above it.

Character | Consciousness | Contrast | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | Light | Means | Panic | Personality | Reality |

August von Kotzebue, fully August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue

A heart once poisoned by suspicion has no longer room for love.

Character | Heart | Love | Suspicion |

Abbé Hugo Felicite de Lamennais

The heart of him who truly loves is a paradise on earth; he has God in himself, for God is love.

Character | Earth | God | Heart | Love | Paradise | God |

David Kimchi, aka Hebrew acronym as the RaDaK

He whose heart is closed will not be benefited by open eyes.

Character | Heart | Will |

Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva

There is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversity.

Adversity | Character | Dignity | Heart | Instinct | Man |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.

Character | Doubt | Heart | Imagination | Mind | Mistrust | Panic | Will |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

Subjectivity is the truth. By virtue of the relationship subsisting between the eternal truth and the existing individual, the paradox came into being. Let us now go further, let us suppose that the eternal essential truth is itself a paradox. How does the paradox come into being? By putting the eternal essential truth into juxtaposition with existence. Hence when we posit such a conjunction with the truth itself, the truth becomes a paradox. The eternal truth has come into being in time: this is the paradox.

Character | Eternal | Existence | Individual | Paradox | Relationship | Time | Truth | Virtue | Virtue |