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

Sinéad O’Connor, fully Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor

The purpose of life is to find the truth and make it come into everything you do, from one end of the day to the other.

Character | Day | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Truth |

Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

It does not good to offer consoling words to a man in distress; his real friend in a pinch is a friend in deed, when deeds are needed.

Character | Deeds | Distress | Friend | Good | Man | Words | Deeds |

Leo Rosten, fully Leo Calvin Rosten, pen name Leonard Q. Ross

The purpose of life is not to be happy - but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

Character | Happy | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose |

Publius Syrus

When you call a man ungrateful you have no words of abuse left.

Abuse | Character | Man | Words |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wise, more liberated and luminous state of being. Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit to it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy.

Character | Ecstasy | Evolution | Force | Mission | Mystical | Purpose | Purpose | Wise |

Grady Poulard

The measure of a man is not determined by his show of outward strength or the volume of his voice or the thunder of his action. It is to be seen rather in terms of the strength of his inner self in terms of the nature and depth of his commitments the sincerity of his purpose and his willingness to continue "growing up."

Action | Character | Man | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Sincerity | Strength |

Francis Quarles

If thy words be too luxuriant, confine them, lest they confide thee; he that thinks he never can speak enough may easily speak too much. A full tongue and an empty brain are seldom parted.

Character | Enough | Words |

Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

The principal reason for sex deification is loss of belief in God. Once men lose God, they lose the purpose of life; and when the purpose of living is forgotten, the universe becomes meaningless. Man then tries to forget his emptiness in the intensity of a momentary experience.

Belief | Character | Experience | God | Life | Life | Man | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Universe | Loss |

Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

The purpose of food is to relieve hunger and thirst, not to minister to caprice and luxury.

Character | Hunger | Luxury | Purpose | Purpose |

William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell

It is wonderful what strength of purpose and boldness and energy of will are roused by the assurance that we are doing our duty.

Boldness | Character | Duty | Energy | Purpose | Purpose | Strength | Will |

John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury

He who is sincere has the easiest task in the world, for, truth being always consistent with itself, he is put to no trouble about his words and actions; it is like traveling on a plain road, which is sure to bring you to your journey's end better than byways in which many lose themselves.

Better | Character | Journey | Truth | Words | World | Trouble |