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

Evelyn Underhill

Books, said St. Augustine after his conversion, could not teach me charity. We still keep on thinking they can. We do not realize... the utter distinctness of God and the things of God. Psychology of religion cannot teach us prayer, and ethics cannot teach us loveÂ… Team games are compulsory in the school of Divine Love -- there is no getting into a corner with a nice, spiritual book.

God | Little | Preference | God |

Ezra Taft Benson

A good name is still to be preferred over great riches. Especially it is to be preferred to the appearance of riches, acquired with nothing down and nothing to pay for 2 months.

Children | Money | Mother | Time | Child |

Ezra Taft Benson

Occasionally, we receive questions as to the propriety of Church members receiving government assistance instead of Church assistance. Let me restate what is a fundamental principle. Individuals, to the extent possible, should provide for their own needs. Where the individual is unable to care for himself, his family should assist. Where the family is not able to provide, the Church should render assistance, not the government.

Better | Choice | Good | Important | Mother | Perfection | Principles | Qualities | Right | Think |

Ezra Taft Benson

Tonight I will speak to you about our beloved republic and the inspired agents whom God raised up to establish the foundation upon which our liberty rests. . . . I speak to you as members of the “household of faith,” the Lord’s true church, and remind you of your solemn charge to uphold, sustain, and defend the kingdom of God. The destiny of America was divinely decreed. The events that established our great nation were foreknown to God and revealed to prophets of old. As in an enacted drama, the players who came on the scene were rehearsed and selected for their parts. Their talent, abilities, capacities, and weaknesses were known before they were born.

Abundance | Authority | Body | Books | Man | Mother | Sense | Tenderness |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

In spite of the polls, the fact is that American Muslims are very happy and they thrive in this country.

Culture | Listening | People |

Felix Adler

An ideal is a port toward which we resolve to steer. We may not reach it. The mere fact that our goal is definitely located does not suffice to conduct us thither. But surely we shall thus stand a better chance of making port in the end than if we drift about aimlessly, the sport of winds and tides, without having decided in our own minds in what direction we ought to bend our course. The moral law is the expression of our inmost nature, and when we live in consonance with it we feel that we are living out our true being.

Age | Childhood | Father | Mother | Respect | Reverence | Respect |

Felix Adler

Theories of what is true have their day. They come and go, leave their deposit in the common stock of knowledge, and are supplanted by other more convincing theories. The thinkers and investigators of the world are pledged to no special theory, but feel themselves free to search for the greater truth beyond the utmost limits of present knowledge. So likewise in the field of moral truth, it is our hope, that men in proportion as they grow more enlightened, will learn to hold their theories and their creeds more loosely, and will none the less, nay, rather all the more be devoted to the supreme end of practical righteousness to which all theories and creeds must be kept subservient. There are two purposes then which we have in view: To secure in the moral and religious life perfect intellectual liberty, and at the same time to secure concert in action. There shall be no shackles upon the mind, no fetters imposed in early youth which the growing man or woman may feel prevented from shaking off, no barrier set up which daring thought may not transcend. And on the other hand there shall be unity of effort, the unity that comes of an end supremely prized and loved, the unity of earnest, morally aspiring persons, engaged in the conflict with moral evil.

Aid | Cause | Culture | Evolution | Experience | Faith | Force | Humanity | Life | Life | Mankind | Morality | Nature | Optimism | Past | Peace | Pessimism | Power | Will |

Gustave Flaubert

Isn?t ?not to be bored? one of the principal goals of life?

Mother |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

He sees daily evidence that many things held to be true by nine-tenths of all men are, in reality, false, and he is thereby apt to acquire a doubt of everything, including his own beliefs.

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own.

Love | Mother |

Gustavo Gutiérrez

There exists a dialectical relationship between the Promise and its partial fulfillments. The resurrection itself is the fulfillment of something promised and likewise the anticipation of a future.

Friend | Mother |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The New Logic ? it would be nice if it worked. Ergo, it will work.

Mother |

Hamilton Wright Mabie

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.

Mother |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.

Heart |

Italian Proverbs

The father a saint the son a devil.

Culture | Means |

Italian Proverbs

The friendship of the great is fraternity with lions.

Culture | Evolution | Religion | Research | Science | Theories | World |

Italian Proverbs

The comforter's head never aches.

Culture |

Italian Proverbs

The devil is bad because he is old.

Ability | Age | Art | Control | Culture | Humor | Memory | Need | Time | Work | World | Art |

Italian Proverbs

While there's life there's hope.

Children | Mother |

J. L. Balsford

There are men whose stomachs are the clamorous creditors that sooner or later throw them into bankruptcy.

Mother |