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

Wes Nisker, fully Wes "Scoop" Nisker

We live in a world of many illusions and much of human belief is ritualized nonsense.

Belief | Nonsense | World |

Jacob Needleman

More and more, we are all becoming aware that our lives are being lived for us by influences that, however numerous they appear, are in fact only so many reflections of one kind of movement in the life of man, a movement toward externals, toward needs and gratifications that, however justified in their own right, become destructive when they pretend to represent the whole meaning of human life.

Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Right |

Kirby Page

Sin is a tree with a great many branches, but it has only one root, namely, the inordinate love of self.

Love | Self | Sin |

Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt

All big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.

History |

Tamura Ryūichi

To make a single poem we need to kill. We must kill many things. Shoot, murder, poison many of the things we love.

Kill | Love | Murder | Need | Poem |

Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers

There are many things children accept as “grown-up things” over which they have no control and for which they have no responsibility – for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents’ decision to live apart.

Cause | Children | Control | Decision | Need | Parents | Responsibility |

Robert Edward Rubin, aka Eddy Rubin

In business, the chief focus is on profitability. Government, by contrast, has no simple bottom line but rather a vast array of interests and priorities, many of which exist in a state of tension or conflict. For that reason, decision making in government is vastly more complex.

Business | Contrast | Decision | Focus | Government | Reason | Government |

Ramanuja, aka Śrī Ramanuja, Śrī Ramanujacharya, Ethirajar (Yatiraja), Emberumannar, Lakshmana Muni NULL

The soul cannot be understood as an aggregate of many parts, for everywhere it is apprehended as being other than the body, being that which measures and of one form. It is that which says in the body, `I know this.’

Body | Soul |

Frederick H. Ryer, Sr.

No matter how many times you have wronged or hurt by others, all it takes is one act of kindness to make you believe in the goodness that exists in the world.

Kindness | World |

Arnot L. Sheppard, Jr.

Isn't it surprising how many things, if not said immediately, seem not worth saying ten minutes from now?

Worth |

Bradford Smith

Meditation, because it is free of dogma, of historical commitments and narrow prejudices, because it is practiced for the most part silently and thereby secretly, and because it is practiced by some members of all religions - meditation is a channel for seekers of all faiths or no faith, a river into which many streams can freely flow.

Dogma | Faith | Meditation |

Alfred Edward Taylor

History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.

History | Past | People |

William Ashley “Billy” Sunday

The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.

Enough | Joy | Men | Religion | Trouble |

Ralph Waldo Trine

Many will receive great help, and many will be entirely healed by a practice somewhat after the following nature: Wit a mind at peace, and with a heart going out in love to all, go into the quiet of your own interior self, holding the thought - I am one with the Infinite Spirit of Life, the life of my life. I then as spirit, I a spiritual being, can in my own real nature admit of no disease. I now open my body, in w2hich disease has obtained a foothold, I open it fully to the inflowing tide of this Infinite Life, and it now, even now, is pouring in and coursing through my body, and the healing process is going on. Realize this so fully that you begin to feel a quickening and a warming glow imparted by the life forces to the body. Believe the healing process is going on. Believe it, and hold continually to it. Many people greatly desire a certain thing but expect something else. They have greater faith in the power of evil than in the power of good, and hence they remain ill.

Body | Desire | Disease | Evil | Faith | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Nature | Peace | People | Power | Practice | Quiet | Receive | Self | Spirit | Thought | Will | Wit | Following | Thought |