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

John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury

No man’s body is as strong as his appetites, but Heaven has corrected the boundlessness of his voluptuous desires by stinting his strength and contracting his capacities.

Body | Character | Heaven | Man | Strength |

John P. Webster

The chiefest action for a man of spirit is never to be out of action; the soul was never put into the body to stand still.

Action | Body | Character | Man | Soul | Spirit |

George Matthew Adams

Tension is a killer! Just relax and note the immediate effect. One of peace and ease of mind. One in which every organ of the body joins. In relaxation there is unity of mind, body and spirit.

Body | Mind | Peace | Spirit | Unity | Wisdom |

Yitzchok Waldshein

Regardless of where a person actually is physically, he is really where his thoughts are. A person constantly has a choice to think elevated and uplifting thoughts or negative, self-destructive thoughts. How old you feel is greatly dependent on your attitude about yourself. Elderly people can increase their vitality and vigor by considering themselves young.

Character | Choice | People | Self | Old | Think |

Sherwood Anderson

I have sometimes a queer mystical feeling as regards the attitude of people in general. Just as there are physical diseases, so there are diseases of feelings. In a little town like this I feel that on some days everyone goes about hating everyone else. Then something happens and a good feeling comes back. I think the whole of mankind must be like that.

Feelings | Good | Little | Mankind | Mystical | People | Wisdom | Think |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

The soul is of itself, all verges to it, all has reference to what ensures, all that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence, not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime. The indirect is just as much as the direct, the spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body, if not more.

Body | Character | Day | Death | Man | Soul | Spirit | Woman |

John Armstrong

There is, they say, (and I believe there is), a spark within us of th’ immortal fire, that animates and moulds the grosser frame; and when the body sinks, escapes to heaven; its native seat, and mixes with the gods.

Body | Heaven | Wisdom |

Horace Traubel

Death fills me with its abundance. What is this flood, overcoming body and sense? I feel the walls of my skull crack, the barriers part, the sun-flood enter - Love, lore, not lost, only magnified, floating eternal seas of essence - before and behind births and deaths, spiritual gravitation, the emergence ever-more expanding... O my questioner! you do not suspect me - you suspect yourself: to-morrow, seeing yourself, you will see me, and the illumined spirit, passing the portal, God-grown, will hail me proudly.

Abundance | Body | Character | Death | Eternal | God | Love | Sense | Spirit | Will |

Chayim Efrayim Zaichyk

If you have a positive attitude towards the events of your life, even though to an outside observer your life might seem full of suffering, you nevertheless will live a happy life. What to others might seem misfortunes, you will view as opportunities for spiritual growth.

Character | Events | Growth | Happy | Life | Life | Suffering | Will |

Edwin Percy Whipple

Character is the spiritual body of the person, and represents the individualization of vital experience, the conversion of unconscious things into self-conscious men.

Body | Character | Experience | Men | Self |

Franz Alexander, fully Franz Gabriel Alexander

The fact that the mind rules the body is, in spite of its neglect by biology and medicine, the most fundamental fact which we know about the life process.

Body | Life | Life | Mind | Neglect | Wisdom |

Harry F. Banks, real name possibly Harry Band

For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.

Ability | Important | Success | Wisdom |

James Ford Bell

Fear is an insidious virus. Given a breeding place in our minds, it will permeate the whole body of our work; it will eat away our spirit and block the forward path of our endeavors. Fear is the greatest enemy of progress... Fear is met and destroyed with courage.

Body | Courage | Enemy | Fear | Progress | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Work |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave... which rises, and which is opposed by the descending movement of matter.. this rising wave is consciousness... running through human generations, subdividing itself into individuals. This subdivision was vaguely indicated in it, but could not have been made clear without matter. Thus souls are continually being created, which, nevertheless, in a certain sense pre-existed. They are nothing else than the little rills into which the great river of life divides itself, flowing through the body of humanity. The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course. Consciousness is distinct from the organism it animates, although it must undergo its vicissitudes... the brain underlines at ever instant the motor indications of the state of consciousness; but the interdependence of consciousness and brain is limited to this... consciousness is essentially free.

Body | Consciousness | Humanity | Life | Life | Little | Nothing | Sense | Wisdom |

Zachary T. Bercovitz

To get the body in tone, get the mind in tune.

Body | Mind | Wisdom |

William Blake

The notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by... melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

Body | Man | Soul | Wisdom |

William Blake

Man has no body distinct from his Soul: for that called Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.

Age | Body | Man | Soul | Wisdom |