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

Hermetica - Libellus XII NULL

God makes the Aeon, the Aeon makes the Kosmos, the Kosmos makes Time, and Time makes Coming-to-be. The essence of God is the Good, the essence of the Aeon is sameness, the essence of the Kosmos is order, the essence of Time is change, and the essence of Coming-to-be is life. The workings of God are mind and soul, the workings of the Aeon are immortality and duration, the workings of the Aeon are immortality and duration, the workings of the kosmos are re-instatement in identity and re-instatement by substitution, the workings of Time are increase and decrease, and the workings of Coming-to-be are quality and quantity. The aeon then is in God, the Kosmos is in the Aeon, Time is in the Kosmos, and Coming-to-be takes place in Time.

Change | God | Good | Immortality | Life | Life | Mind | Order | Soul | Time | Wisdom | God |

Arsène Houssaye

Imagination, whatever may be said to the contrary, will always hold a place in history, as truth does in romance. Has not romance been penned with history in view?

History | Imagination | Romance | Truth | Will | Wisdom |

Hitopadesa or The Hitopadesa or Hitopadesha NULL

Amongst all things, knowledge is truly the best thing: from its not being liable ever to be stolen, from its not being purchasable, and from its being imperishable...Learning is superior to beauty; learning is better than hidden treasure; learning is a companion on a journey to a strange country; learning is strength inexhaustible.

Beauty | Better | Journey | Knowledge | Learning | Strength | Wisdom |

Mahlon Hoagland

As children we all possess a natural, uninhibited curiosity, a hunger for explanation, which seems to die slowly as we age - suppressed, I suppose, by the high value we place on conformity and by the need not to appear ignorant. It betokens a conviction that somehow science is innately incomprehensible. It precludes reaching deeper, thereby denying the profound truth that understanding enriches experience, that explanation vastly enhances beauty of the natural world in the eye of the beholder.

Age | Beauty | Children | Conformity | Curiosity | Experience | Hunger | Need | Science | Truth | Understanding | Wisdom | World | Beauty | Value |

Abbie Hoffman, fully Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman

I grew up with the idea that democracy is not something you believe in, or a place you hang your hat, but it’s something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles and falls apart.

Democracy | Wisdom |

Thomas Hobbes

Whatever therefore is consequent to a tie of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such a condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Culture | Danger | Death | Earth | Enemy | Fear | Force | Industry | Invention | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Men | Security | Society | Strength | Time | War | Wisdom | Danger |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Reason may be the lever, but sentiment gives you the fulcrum and the place to stand on if you want to move the world.

Reason | Sentiment | Wisdom | World |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

We possess a hidden higher self, the spark of divinity within the soul, which reflects this transcendental reality in our lives. By fulfilling certain necessary conditions, such as making ourselves more loving and compassionate, we can clear away the mental and emotional static that separates us from this inner reality, enabling the higher self to assume a central, guiding role in our lives. This awakening - called enlightenment, deliverance, or salvation in the various traditions - is the goal or purpose of human life. When we achieve this complete transformation of consciousness, we awaken from our limited, often painful condition and reconnect with our true nature.

Awakening | Consciousness | Divinity | Enlightenment | Life | Life | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Salvation | Self | Soul | Wisdom |

Washington Irving

A woman’s whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure, she embarks her soul in the traffic of affection; and, if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.

Adventure | Ambition | Avarice | Heart | History | Life | Life | Soul | Wisdom | Woman | World | Ambition |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

A change in belief patterns takes place on the most basic level of existence.

Belief | Change | Existence | Wisdom |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into the cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness may extend.

Consciousness | Ego | Little | Will | Wisdom |

Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents... It is a place where the city of man services not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community... It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

Beauty | Body | Commerce | Desire | Goals | Hunger | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Society | Wisdom | Society | Commerce | Beauty | Child |

Janet Kauffman

The wild is a place to be tamed. It is an arrogant designation of priority - make the world over for humans. Americans, seeing landscape from the beginning as real estate, are scrupulous about dealing in it, and in prosperous areas all over the country, a fierce moral judgment falls on “waste” places, scrubland, even the vacant lots in developments, where the ragweed’s got a good hold. For God’s sake, do something with it! everybody says.

Beginning | God | Good | Judgment | Waste | Wisdom | World |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens into the primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was a conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.

Ego | Soul | 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 |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

All coming into existence takes place with freedom, not by necessity. Nothing comes into existence by virtue of a logical ground, but only by a cause. Every cause terminates in a freely effecting cause.

Cause | Existence | Freedom | Necessity | Nothing | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz

To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another.

Love | Wisdom | Happiness |