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

Elio Frattaroli

I believe that our choice between two models of psychiatry is really a choice between two competing sets of moral values that will ultimately determine the kind of society we live in. One is the Psychotherapeutic Model’s ideal of healing the soul with its values of self-awareness, autonomy, personal growth, an I-Thou spirit of love, respect, and compassion for others, and an acceptance of moral responsibility for our own egoistic impulses and emotions. The other is the Medical Model’s ideal of quick fix, with its swimming-pool values of stability and conformity, and an I-It orientation toward material success and other superficial addictive pleasures

Acceptance | Awareness | Choice | Compassion | Conformity | Emotions | Growth | Love | Model | Respect | Responsibility | Self | Self-awareness | Society | Soul | Spirit | Success | Will | Society |

Sidney Greenberg

A waste far more worthy of our tears is the enormous energy within us that never gets channeled, the love that is never expressed, the kindness that never surfaces, the compassion and tenderness that are never awakened.

Compassion | Energy | Kindness | Love | Tears | Tenderness | Waste |

Os Guiness

There is only the nobility of the compassion of the enlightened on their road to the “liberation” of extinction.

Compassion | Nobility |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Religion declined not because it was refuted but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.

Authority | Compassion | Creed | Discipline | Faith | Habit | Love | Past | Religion | Worship | Crisis |

Huston Smith, fully Huston Cummings Smith

Life is like a tapestry that we view from the wrong side. We see all the strands and knots, and it makes no sense from the back. But there is a different view of the whole things to which we are assured some day we will be privy. In the meanwhile, there are all these knots we have to deal with existentially; the path has been charted – compassion and justice – imbued by vision. And it’s up to the individual.

Compassion | Day | Individual | Justice | Life | Life | Sense | Vision | Will | Wrong |

Peter W. Jedlicka

There are only three things to teach: Simplicity, patience, and compassion. Simplicity in action and thoughts, will return you to the source of your being. Patience with friends and enemies alike, will give you harmony with the way things are. Compassion with yourself, will settle all the differences between you and other beings in the world.

Action | Compassion | Harmony | Patience | Simplicity | Teach | Will | World | Friends |

Louise J. Kaplan

The toddler must say "no" in order to find out who she is. The adolescent says "no" to assert who she is not.

Avarice | Compassion | Nothing | Parents | People | Pride | Tenderness | Youth | Youth |

Samuel H. Miller

Faith faces everything that makes the world uncomfortable - pain, fear, loneliness, shame, death - and acts with a compassion by which these things are transformed, even exalted.

Compassion | Death | Faith | Fear | Loneliness | Pain | Shame | World |

Guru Nanak

Make divine knowledge thy food, compassion thy store-keeper, and the voice which is in every heart the pipe to call to repast.

Compassion | Heart | Knowledge |

Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman

Human morality is composed of four interconnecting principles: a genetic predisposition toward survival, the neural development of the brain, a social imperative toward group cohesion, and a cognitive propensity to make distinctions between right and wrong and good and evil. Our moral continuum appears to be strongly influenced by the degrees of connectedness we feel with others; the more connected we feel, the more we act with generosity, compassion and fairness.

Compassion | Evil | Fairness | Generosity | Good | Morality | Principles | Right | Survival | Wrong |

Patañjali NULL

Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked.

Calmness | Compassion | Happy | Indifference | Mind |

Maggie Ross, pen name for Martha Reeves

Pain is the source of compassion, and compassion shifts our perspective on pain, which frees us from the fear of death.

Compassion | Death | Fear | Pain |

Dean Rusk, fully David Dean Rusk

One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears – by listening to them.

Listening |

Charlene Spretnak

Without nonviolence - mind states of loving kindness and compassion - at the core of our societal construct, however, even the desire to protect and preserve can be manipulated in service to barbarism masquerading as idealism.

Barbarism | Compassion | Desire | Idealism | Kindness | Mind | Service |

Albert Schweitzer

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

Compassion | Man | Peace | Will |

Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

Prayer begins by talking to God, but it ends by listening to Him.

Ends | God | Listening | Prayer | Talking |

Albert Schweitzer

The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.

Compassion | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Will |

Richard “Rick” Stone

Real listening is the creation of a sacred space in which another’s words are contained and transformed into hallowed speech. Like remembering, this form of listening is also intentional.

Listening | Sacred | Space | Speech | Words |