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

Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson

Bureaucracies are designed to perform public business. But as soon as a bureaucracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy.

Business | Enemy | Life | Life | Public | Regard | Wisdom |

Freddy Arevalo, aka Don Valerio Cohaila

I am a particle of this organism called the earth... Life is because life must be... Life and death are cosmic breath... Each person designs his own destiny... The purpose of life is to continue developing consciousness.

Consciousness | Death | Destiny | Earth | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |

Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Obscurity and a competence - that is the life that is best worth living.

Character | Competence | Life | Life | Obscurity | Obscurity | Worth |

Aubrey de Vere, fully Aubrey Albericus de Vere NULL

This span of life was lent for lofty duties, not for selfishness, not to be whiled away in aimless dreams, but to improve ourselves and improve mankind.

Character | Dreams | Life | Life | Mankind | Selfishness |

Hugh Walpole, fully Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole

It isn't life that matters; it's the courage you bring to it.

Character | Courage | Life | Life |

William L. Abbott

Develop the art of friendliness. One can experience a variety of emotions staying home and reading or watching television; one will be alive but hardly living. Most of the meaningful aspects of life are closely associated with people. Even the dictionary definition of life involves people.

Art | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | People | Reading | Television | Will | Wisdom | Art |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and one with, and the future is uncertain.

Future | Life | Life | Man | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen

Neither the tenuous things of the human spirit nor the gross material needs of human life can come in contact with this business enterprise [Big Business] in such a way as to deflect its course from the line of least resistance, which is the line of greatest present gain within the law.

Business | Character | Law | Life | Life | Present | Spirit | Business |

John Welwood

Relationship as a path leads us on a journey of the heart - which involves becoming more fully human, more available to life as a whole. Intimate relationships are ideally suited as this kind of path because they inspire our heart to open, while at the same time showing us where we are most stuck.

Character | Heart | Journey | Life | Life | Relationship | Time |

Zeno of Citium NULL

One should seek virtue for its own sake and not from hope or fear, or any external motive. It is in virtue that happiness consists, for virtue is the state of mind which tends to make the whole of life harmonious.

Character | Fear | Hope | Life | Life | Mind | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |

Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani

What is the meaning of life? The meaning may not be expressed in words. It transcends the mind and the intellect. The meaning is to be experienced, realized... It is open to everyone who would live according to certain disciplines... The discipline of duty. Life is a field of duty, not a dance of desires... The discipline of service... We are here to help others... The opposite of love is not hate but apathy... The discipline of silence... The meaning of life is to love God and to give the service of love to the suffering children of God. And to the birds and animals who are God’s children as well.

Apathy | Character | Children | Discipline | Duty | God | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mind | Service | Silence | Suffering | Words | God |

Visvanatha Chakravarti, fully Visvanatha Chakravarti Thakura

The experience of beauty is pure, self-manifested, compounded equally of joy and consciousness, free from admixture of any other perception, the very twin brother of mystical experience, and the very life of it is supersensous wonder... It is enjoyed by those who are competent thereto, in identity, just as the form of God is itself the joy with which it is recognized.

Beauty | Character | Consciousness | Experience | God | Joy | Life | Life | Mystical | Perception | Self | Wonder | Beauty | God |

Hugh Walpole, fully Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole

I believe the root of all happiness on this earth to life in the realization of a spiritual life with a consciousness of something wider than materialism; in the capacity to live in a world that makes you unselfish because you are not over anxious about your personal place; that makes you tolerant because you realize your own comic fallibility; that gives you tranquillity without complacency because you believe in something so much larger than yourself.

Capacity | Character | Complacency | Consciousness | Earth | Life | Life | Materialism | Tranquility | World | Happiness |

John P. Webster

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another, without helping himself.

Character | Life | Life | Man |

John Wicker

The man who works need never be a problem to anyone. Opportunities multiply as they are seized; they die when neglected. Life is a long line of opportunities. Wealth is not in making money, but in making the man while he is making money. Production, not destruction, leads to success.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Money | Need | Success | Wealth |