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

Hakuin, fully Hakuin Akaku NULL

Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away.

Body | Cause | Earth | Knowing | Man | Nature | Oneness | People | Truth |

Kautilya, aka Chanakya or Vishnu Gupta NULL

The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all direction.

Earth | Power | Rest | Truth |

Hu Shih, or Hú Shì

Practically all the prominent leaders of thought in China today are openly agnostics and even atheists.

Absolute | Sense | Truth |

Elif Safak

How to deal with the goodness of their loved ones? Could be fought against goodness?

Chastity | Earth | Giving | Good | Guilt | Impression | Responsibility | Self | Truth | Wrong |

Elif Safak

The universe is one being. Everything and everyone is interconnected through an invisible web of stories. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all in a silent conversation. Do no harm. Practise compassion. And do not gossip behind anyone's back - not even seemingly innocent remark! The words that come out of our mouth do not vanish but are perpetually stored in infinite space, and they will come back to us in due time. One man's pain will hurt us all. One man's joy will make everyone smile.

Change | Truth | Understand |

Elias Canetti

Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.

Truth |

Elif Safak

No matter who, what part of the world we live, live, until a sense of a lack of deep down we are moving. It's a basic thing we are afraid of not getting lost it in the back. Bilenimizde what is missing very little indeed.

Change | Childhood | Life | Life | Religion | Sense | Time | Truth | Understanding | Woman | World |

Elif Safak

The truth is that I have not sought to understand the world. I tried to change it.

Effort | Truth |

Elias Canetti

Is there still a possibility of public truth? The prime condition for that would be that you pose your own questions, not just answer them. The questions of others have a distorting influence, one adapts to them, accepts words and concepts that should be avoided at all costs. Ideally, you should use only words which you have filled with new meaning.

Life | Life | Truth | Understanding |

William Shakespeare

So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition-- Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart; Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one, and crowned with one crest. A Midsummer Night's Dream (Helena at III, ii)

Man | Merit | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Wrong |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Love renders all of our plans and all of our hopes a gamble

Age | Truth |

Elizabeth Gilbert

If you do not know where you are or what clan you are, how will you find the balance?

Experience | Truth |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But both are equally true.

Enough | Force | Journey | Nature | Regard | Rule | Truth | Universe | Will | Old |

Elizabeth Gilbert

My friend Kate once went to a concert of Mongolian throat singers who were traveling through New York City on a rare world tour. Although she couldn't understand the words to their songs, she found the music almost unbearably sad. After the concert, Kate approached the lead Mongolian singer and asked, What are your songs about? He replied, Our songs are about the same things that everyone else's songs are about: lost love, and somebody stole your fastest horse.

Body | Energy | Friend | Memory | Order | Truth | Understanding | Writing |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Kalos Kai Agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful.

Energy | Memory | Truth | Writing |

Elizabeth Lesser

Spirituality is fearlessness. It is a way of looking boldly at this life we have been given, here, now, on earth, as this human being.

Nature | Search | Truth |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

O Death, O Beyond, Thou art sweet, thou art strange!

Falsehood | Truth |

Elizabeth Lesser

If we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us--secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us.

Cynicism | Life | Life | Nothing | Religion | Search | Spirituality | Truth |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Yoga is the effort to experience one's divinity personally and then to hold on to that experience forever.

Right | Truth |