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

Sidney Greenberg

Some of the most sacred promises are made without words in the silent sanctuary of the soul.

Sacred | Soul | Words |

Sidney Greenberg

Even while we mourn the death of a loved one, there is room in our hearts for thankfulness for that life… Sober reflection can also lead us to a more sympathetic appreciation of the vital role death plays in the economy of life. Life’s significant and zest issue from our awareness of its transiency, its “fragile contingency.” The urge to create, the passion to perfect, the will to heal and cure – all the noblest of human enterprises grow in the soil of human mortality.

Appreciation | Awareness | Death | Life | Life | Mourn | Passion | Reflection | Thankfulness | Will | Appreciation | Awareness |

O. Henry, pen name for William Sydney Porter

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving.

Art | Business | Family | Love | Man | Nothing | Patriotism | Religion | Words | Business | Art |

Robert K. Greenleaf

Responsibility . . . requires that a person think, speak and act as if personally accountable to all who may be affected by his or her thoughts, words and deeds… Awareness is important… Am I moving in the right direction? Is my sense of responsibility growing, deepening, becoming sharper and more insistent?.. A sense of responsibility is an attitude, a feeling.

Awareness | Deeds | Important | Responsibility | Right | Sense | Words | Awareness |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The primordial experience is the source of [creativity]… In itself it offers no words or images, for it is a vision seen “as in a glass, darkly.” It is merely a deep presentiment that strives to find expression. It is like a whirlwind that seizes everything within reach and, by carrying it aloft, assume a visible shape.

Creativity | Experience | Vision | Words |

Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels.

Soul | Words |

Carson McClullers

Three words were in the captain’s heart. He shaped them soundlessly with his trembling lips, as he had not breath to spare for a whisper, “I am lost.” And having given up life, the captain suddenly began to live.

Heart | Life | Life | Words |

Gabriela Mistral

The poet is an untier of knots, and love wqithout words is a knot, and it drowns.

Love | Words |

Judith M. Newman

Children seem to learn to talk by inventing their own words and rules: by experimenting with language. Children make statements to adults and then wait for adults to put the statements into adult language so they can make a comparison… If the adult says nothing or simply continues the conversation, the child assumes his or her utterance is correct. When adults “correct” – that is, expand in adult language what the children have said – they are providing feedback. The adult and the child are actually speaking different languages, but they understand the situation, the child can compare their different ways of saying the same thing.

Children | Conversation | Language | Nothing | Words | Child | Learn | Understand |

Nasir Khusraw, fully Abu Mo’in Hamid ad-Din Nasir ibn Khusraw al-Qubadiani or Nāsir Khusraw Qubādiyānī, also spelled as Nasir Khusrow and Naser Khosrow

Your words are the seed, your soul is the farmer, the world is your field; let the farmer look to the sowing, that the soil may abundance yield.

Abundance | Soul | Words | World |

Thomas Paine

Those words, “temperate and moderate,” are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing moderately good, if not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is a species of vice.

Cowardice | Cunning | Good | Moderation | Temper | Virtue | Virtue | Words | Moderation |

Arabian Proverbs

The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers; Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

Words |

William Shenstone

A fool and his words are soon parted.

Words |

Florence Scovel Shinn

The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.

Accuracy | Deeds | Life | Life | Words | Deeds |

Richard “Rick” Stone

Real listening is the creation of a sacred space in which another’s words are contained and transformed into hallowed speech. Like remembering, this form of listening is also intentional.

Listening | Sacred | Space | Speech | Words |

Baird T. Spalding

Words are things. Thoughts are things. Where your thoughts are, you are. When we learn to discipline and control our thoughts and feelings, and use only the positive, constructive words, sent forth with divine love, our body and mind respond to that righteousness – right-use-ness. The right use and selection of words is of vital importance but equally important is the feeling behind those words, for feeling is the motivating power that makes the words live.

Body | Control | Discipline | Feelings | Important | Love | Mind | Power | Right | Righteousness | Words | Learn |