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

Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman

Our beliefs serve myriad purposes: They help us to organize the world in meaningful ways… They can also connect us with the transcendent dimensions of experience, and give us inspiration and hope, essential tools for confronting those moments of confusion and doubt that are so often part of life.

Doubt | Experience | Hope | Inspiration | Life | Life | World |

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

It is not God that is worshipped but the group or the authority that claims to speak in His name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority and not violation of integrity.

Authority | Disobedience | God | Integrity | Sin | God |

Jacques Rivière

What is the dogma of original sin but a means of making the things of the flesh enter a spiritual system?

Dogma | Means | Sin | System |

Muriel Spark, fully Dame Muriel Sarah Camberg Spark

It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.

Love | Sin |

Ignatius E. Smith

The pleasure of sin is of short duration… It operates on a law of diminishing returns. The more often it is repeated, the more familiar with its face, the less pleasure sin gives.

Law | Pleasure | Sin |

Ignatius E. Smith

Sin is disappointing. Whoever got out of sin half as much pleasure as he expected?

Pleasure | Sin |

Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

No amount of libido, or passion, no external force, and no inner prompting to sin can make the human action of man anything but free. We are never tempted beyond our strength. Every moral failure is ours alone, because our choices are our own.

Action | Failure | Force | Man | Passion | Sin | Strength | Failure |

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Despair is the one sin that cannot be forgiven.

Despair | Sin |

Franz Werfel, fully Franz Viktor Werfel

The basic formula of all sin is: frustrated or neglected love.

Love | Sin |

John Greenleaf Whittier

Hatred of cant and doubt of human creeds may well be felt; the unpardonable sin is to deny the word of God from within.

Doubt | God | Sin | God |

Frank Tibolt

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.

Action | Inspiration |

Alan Cohen

Our freedom depends on our willingness to see Perfection. The imperfection that we have been taught to see has led only to suffering... Perfection is not a standard to be achieved, but a truth to be acknowledged. It is not the difference between us and God, but the hallmark of our unity with Him. And the honoring of Perfection is not a sin of vanity, but the humble acceptance of our identity as offspring of the Eternal.

Acceptance | Eternal | Freedom | God | Imperfection | Perfection | Sin | Suffering | Truth | Unity |

Albert Camus

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another, and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Life | Life | Sin |

Alexander Graham Bell

Know what work you want to do and go after it. The young man who gets ahead must decide for himself what he wishes to do. From his own tastes, his own enthusiasm, how he must get the motive and the inspiration which are to start him on his way to a successful life.

Enthusiasm | Inspiration | Life | Life | Man | Wishes | Work |

Amos Bronson Alcott

Every sin provides its punishment.

Punishment | Sin |