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

Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

Religion is not what is grasped by the brain, but a heart grasp.

Heart | Religion |

Leonard Felder

The process of forgiveness allows you to turn your heart toward healing, release, and compassion instead of using your energy for revenge or punishment. Forgiveness allows you to build something positive in the present while still making sure not to repeat what happened in the past.

Compassion | Energy | Forgiveness | Heart | Past | Present | Punishment | Revenge | Forgiveness |

Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

Prayer is an unfailing means of cleansing the heart of passions. But it must be combined with utmost humility.

Heart | Humility | Means | Prayer |

Dorothy Canfield Fisher

“How many times in our comfortable lives,” I asked myself, “have we been moved to rise at half-past two of a winter night to feast and give thanks because we have so lived that we are suddenly pierced to the heart with the sheer blessedness of everyday existence?”

Blessedness | Existence | Heart | Past |

William Lloyd Garrison

The history of mankind is crowded with evidences proving that physical coercion is not adapted to moral regeneration; that the sinful dispositions of men can be subdued only by love; that evil can be exterminated from the earth only by goodness… that there is great security in being gentle, harmless, long-suffering, and abundant in mercy; that it is only the meek who shall inherit the earth, for the violent, who resort to the sword, are destined to perish with the sword.

Coercion | Earth | Evil | History | Love | Mankind | Men | Mercy | Security | Suffering |

Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

I do not share the belief that there can or will be on earth one religion. I am striving, therefore, to find a common factor and to induce mutual tolerance

Belief | Earth | Religion | Will |

Zelda Fitzgerald, born Zelda Sayre

The purpose of life on earth is that the soul should grow – So grow! By doing what is right.

Earth | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Soul |

Os Guiness

Are you leading an examined life? Or are you living in the hand-me-down ideas of others? Do you pick up the music coming from dimensions beyond the here and now? Or are you one of those who just don’t get it? Let your mind and your heart run deep. Come, join the seeker’s path on the long journey home.

Heart | Ideas | Journey | Life | Life | Mind | Music |

Charles Hartshorne

A miracle is visible only to the heart it touches.

Heart |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Faith is intellectual humility, devotion of the mind, a true offering, the finest feat the heart can perform.

Devotion | Faith | Heart | Humility | Mind |

Aelred Graham

Without the worship of the heart liturgical prayer becomes a matter of formal routine; its technically finished performance may give aesthetic pleasure, but the spirit has gone out from it.

Aesthetic | Heart | Pleasure | Prayer | Spirit | Worship |

Friedrich Halm, pseudonym for Baron Eligius Franz Joseph von Münch-Bellinghausen

What love is, if thou wouldst be taught, thy heart must teach alone – two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.

Heart | Love | Teach | Thought |

Joseph Haydn, fully Franz Joseph Haydn, aka "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet"

When I think of God, my heart is so filled with joy that the notes fly off as from a spindle.

God | Heart | Joy | Think |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Prayer is an act which makes the heart audible to God.

God | Heart | Prayer |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Dazzled by the brilliant achievements of the intellect in science and technique, we have been deluded into believing that we are the masters of the earth and our will the ultimate criterion of what is right and wrong.

Earth | Right | Science | Will | Wrong | Intellect |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Faith implies no denial of evil, no disregard of danger, no whitewashing of the abominable… Faith is not a mechanical insurance but a dynamic, personal act, flowing between the heart of man and the love of God.

Danger | Dynamic | Evil | Faith | God | Heart | Love | Man |

William James

Sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy.

Agnostic | Heart | Philosophy | Sadness |