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

Robert M. Pirsig

Programmes of a political nature are important and products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outside from there.

Character | Heart | Important | Individual | Nature | Right | Work | World |

Cecil F. Poole

Until man places on tolerance and open-mindedness a value equal to the value that he places on material possessions, he will continue to be stranded on an island surrounded by his own prejudices, ideas, preconceived opinions, and knowledge that is limited by the horizon of his own ignorance.

Character | Ideas | Ignorance | Knowledge | Man | Possessions | Will | Wisdom | Value |

United Technologies Corporation NULL

The most creative job in the world. It involves taste, fashion, decorating, recreation, education, transportation, psychology, cuisine, designing, literature, medicine, handicraft, art, horticulture, economics, government, community relations, pediatrics, geriatrics, entertainment, maintenance, purchasing, direct mail, law, accounting, religion, energy, and management. Anyone who can handle all those has to be somebody special. She is. She’s a homemaker.

Art | Character | Economics | Education | Energy | Entertainment | Government | Law | Literature | Psychology | Recreation | Religion | Taste | World |

Andrew Preston Peabody

The force, the mass of character, mind, heart or soul that a man can put into any work is the most important factor in that work.

Character | Force | Heart | Important | Man | Mind | Soul | Work |

Saint-John Perse, first Saint-Leger Leger, pseudonyms of Alexis Leger

There is no history but that of the soul, no peace but that of the soul.

Character | History | Peace | Soul |

Plotinus NULL

For on earth, in all the succession of life, it is not the Soul within but the Shadow outside of the authentic man, that grieves and complains and acts out the plot on this world stage which men have dotted with stages of their own constructing. All this is the doing of man knowing no more than to live the lower and outer life.

Character | Earth | Knowing | Life | Life | Man | Men | Soul | World |

Alexander Pope

An honest man’s the noblest work of God.

Character | God | Man | Wisdom | Work |

Jane Porter

Self-love leads men of narrow minds to measure all mankind by their own capacity.

Capacity | Character | Love | Mankind | Men | Self | Self-love | Wisdom |

James Oliver

The world is blessed most by men who do things, and not by those who merely talk about them.

Character | Men | World | Blessed |

Jianzhi Sengcan, Third Patriarch of Zen, Third Patriarch of Ch'an

The Perfect Way knows no difficulties, except that it refuses to make preferences. Only when freed from hate and love does it reveal itself fully and without disguise. A tenth of an inch’s difference, and heaven and earth are set apart. If you wish to see it before your own eyes have no fixed thoughts either for or against it. To set up what you like against what you dislike - this is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of the Way is not understood. Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose... Pursue not the outer entanglements, dwell not in the inner void; be serene in the oneness of things, and dualism vanishes of itself... Transformations going on in the empty world that confronts us appear to be real because of Ignorance. Do not strive to seek after the True, only cease to cherish opinions... One in all, All in One - if only this is realized, no more worry about not being perfect. When the mind and each believing mind and Mind, this is where words fail, for it is not of the past, present or future.

Character | Disease | Disguise | Earth | Future | Hate | Heaven | Ignorance | Love | Meaning | Mind | Oneness | Past | Peace | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Words | World | Worry |

Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL

Most men are afraid of a bad name, but few fear their consciences.

Character | Fear | Men | Afraid |

Howard Vincent O'Brien

People work for self-expression.

Character | People | Self | Work |

Nikita Ivanovich Panin

Two men please God - who serves Him with all his heart because he knows Him; who seeks Him with all his heart because he knows Him not.

Character | God | Heart | Men | God |

J. C. Penney, formally James Cash Penney

Success in business does not depend upon genius. Any young man of ordinary intelligence who is normally sound and not afraid to work should succeed in spite of obstacles and handicaps if he plays the game fairly and keeps everlastingly at it.

Business | Character | Genius | Intelligence | Man | Sound | Success | Work | Business | Afraid |

Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

Enemies carry about slander, not in the form in which it took its rise... The scandal of men is everlasting; even then does it survive when you would suppose it to be dead.

Character | Men | Scandal | Slander |

Plotinus NULL

Many times it has happened: lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-centered; beholding a marvelous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine; stationing within It by having attained that activity; poised above whatsoever in the Intellectual is less than the Supreme: yet, there comes the moment of descent from intellection to reasoning, and after that sojourn in the divine, I ask myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did the Soul ever enter into my body, the Soul which even within the body, is the high thing it has shown itself to be.

Beauty | Body | Character | Life | Life | Order | Self | Soul |