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

Joan Borysenko

Four things are required to develop generosity of spirit: (1) The intention to serve God in all our affairs. (2) The belief that if that intention is honored, the Universe will provide all that is required materially and spiritually for our success. (3) The understanding that we receive as we give, and that our own creativity is enhanced through mentoring others. (4) Practical groundedness. God can’t deliver the lottery jackpot unless we buy a ticket!

Belief | Creativity | Generosity | God | Intention | Receive | Spirit | Success | Understanding | Universe | Will | God |

John Milton

A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believes things, only on the authority of other without other reason, then, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes heresy.

Authority | Belief | Man | Reason | Truth |

John Stuart Mill

One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.

Belief | Force |

Lin Yutang

I am speaking of religion as belief colored with emotion, an elemental sense of piety or reverence for life summing up man's certainty as to what is right and noble.

Belief | Life | Life | Man | Piety | Religion | Reverence | Right | Sense |

Joseph Wood Krutch

Those for whom the belief in immortality is most vivid are the most likely to practice the virtues which have a survival value and the least likely to deviate into either those virtues or those vices which are exclusively human.

Belief | Immortality | Practice | Survival | Value |

Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe

If our belief is passionate enough, the river comes to us and in whatever form the passionate belief makes possible. Belief is causative and passion is formative. Passionate belief is the chaotic attractor that lifts chaos into its particular order.

Belief | Enough | Order | Passion |

Joyce Carol Oates

The worst cynicism: a belief in luck.

Belief | Cynicism | Luck |

Karl Rahner

We are called upon to love in faith – to nurse our firm belief in the stars of sweet reasonableness that continue to shine behind the darkness of events which seem to us our and grim beyond our understanding.

Belief | Darkness | Events | Faith | Love | Understanding |

Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

Grief is not natural but a matter of belief or opinion.

Belief | Grief | Opinion |

Max Born

The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world.

Belief | Evil | Truth | World |

Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner

A religion which has lost its basic conviction about the interconnection of men with men in their common struggles for the human, will never command belief in the realm of the superhuman.

Belief | Men | Religion | Will |

Michael S. Josephson

A deeper satisfaction lies in honoring universal ethical values, that is, values that people everywhere believe should inform behavior. That unity between principled belief and honorable behavior is the foundation for real happiness.

Behavior | Belief | People | Unity |

Norman Cousins

Drugs are not always necessary, but belief in recovery always is.

Belief |

Norman Vincent Peale

Believe that you are receiving answers to your prayers. Belief tends to create that which is held in the mind by faith.

Belief | Faith | Mind |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief and, if believed, it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it, or some failure of energy stifles the movements at its birth.

Belief | Birth | Energy | Failure | Failure |

Plato NULL

The belief in immortality depends finally upon the belief in God. If there exists a good and wise God, then there also exists a progress of mankind toward perfection; and if there be no progress of men towards perfection, then there cannot be a good and wise God. We cannot suppose that God’s moral government, the beginnings of which we see in the world and in ourselves, will cease when we leave this life.

Belief | God | Good | Government | Immortality | Life | Life | Mankind | Men | Perfection | Progress | Will | Wise | World |

Peter De Vries

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.

God | Need | Omnipotence | Order |

Ralph Barton Perry

Faith is belief, and belief has, over and above its intellectual character, an aspect of irmness, persistence, and subjective certainty.

Belief | Character | Faith | Persistence |

Robert Oxton Bolt

A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.

Belief | Mind |

Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Belief | Ignorance | Injustice | Injustice | Tragedy | World |