Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Relationship

"It is only when we hold people and things lightly that we can enjoy them fully. Life is a constant flow of coming and going. Things and people come into our lives and they leave, just as sure as they came... Our key to happiness is to enjoy a relationship while it lasts, allowing the person and the relationship complete freedom to evolve in the highest way for them... Let go and let God." -

"If you want to bring a difficult relationship into the light of love, make up your mind to change your image of who both of you are." -

"Growing familiarity has the deadly effect of enabling one to predict the other person's responses; and when that happens, the stimulating quality and creative tension of a relationship are finished." - Arthur Koestler

"Life is a process, a seamless garment, and there is a universal nexus connecting all phenomena so that every part pulsates sensitively to every other part. The truth is inexpressibly deeper than a harmony-between-parts relationship, but this can only be experienced mystically. Pragmatically, on the plane of our sensory experiencing, love is the witness of the unseen yet ever potent law of unity. The root of all sins is to be blind to this fundamental fact regarding the inner nature of the universe. If love rules us, no sins can be committed. En passant we may say that the doctrine of karma is a phenomenal expression of the organic unity of the universe. The individual cannot gain at the cost of the whole. Pain and suffering check us when harmony is disturbed. Love restores harmony and registers through us a deep compassion which dissolves our separative carapaces and releases our energies for impersonal service." - Arthur W Osborn

"Life is a process, a seamless garment, and there is a universal nexus connecting all phenomena so that every part pulsates sensitively to every other part. The truth is inexpressibly deeper than a harmony-between-parts relationship, but this can only be experienced mystically. Pragmatically, on the plane of our sensory experiencing, love is the witness of the unseen yet ever potent law of unity. The root of all sins is to be blind to this fundamental fact regarding the inner nature of the universe. IF love rules us, no sins can be committed. En passant we may say that the doctrine of karma is a phenomenal expression of the organic unity of the universe. The individual cannot gain at the cost of the whole. Pain and suffering check us when harmony is disturbed. Love restores harmony and registers through us a deep compassion which dissolves our separative carapaces and releases our energies for impersonal service." - Arthur W Osborn

"What cosmic reality is it that love demonstrates? The essential quality of every act of love is to bring the apparently discrete into a relationship of unity" - Arthur W Osborn

"Sadness is a great obstacle to serving the Almighty. A person who has transgressed should not become excessively sad since this will prevent him from further spiritual growth. One should feel deep regret for the wrong he has done and then continue to feel joy in his relationship with the Almighty since he has sincere regret and is resolved not to repeat his transgression." -

"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us." - Black Elk, formallly Heȟáka Sápa NULL

"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men." - Black Elk, formallly Heȟáka Sápa NULL

"To begin with, it is just One Mind, all One; then we generate all the boundaries and definitions. As soon as we define ourselves in relation to another we feel more comfortable, because now we know how to be and to act. To go into a situation completely ignorant of our role is very scary. We really have to trust ourselves then. But how can we trust if we do not know who we are? So we fall back on some definition of ourselves and put our trust in that... We lose our identity when we lose our definition. We do not realize it, but that is a wonderful, extraordinary happening, because for a time we are free of our boundaries. For a moment we are nobody, but that is just too frightening. So in order to grab on to some definition, a false sense of security and comfort, what do we do right away? We get into another relationship. At least in relationship, even if it is not working for us, we know who we are." - Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi

"I have heard an expression, “We made love like two ice cubes,” that fits perfectly. Here we are, trying to have a relationship like two chunks of ice and all we can do is bump into each other, all because we are so afraid of melting, losing our false identities." - Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi

"There is no such thing as an insignificant or accidental relationship." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man." - Franz Kafka

"You don't have to buy from anyone. You don't have to work at any particular job. You don't have to participate in any given relationship. You can choose." - Harry Browne, fully Harry Edson Browne

"Effective policy depends not only on the skill of individual moves, but even more importantly on their relationship to each other." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger

"Each child’s mind [should go] through a process like that which the mind of humanity at large has gone through. The truths of number, of form, of relationship in position, were all originally drawn from objects; and to present these truths to the child in the concrete is to let him learn them as the race learned them." - Herbert Spencer

"Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people." - Jawaharlal Nehru

"The fact that the eye constantly thrusts outwards distracts us from self-knowledge and the way inwards. It dissipates attention... The eye says I. We sense when someone is looking at us. Their gaze insists: Pay attention to me! Almost everyone is also aware of that when the observer is standing behind us. We notice after a while. Someone is there. Who is it? Who would not, however, know if someone were listening to us if he or she did not say so. The listener does not put the emphasis on himself or event the other person. He does not insist on a separation between subject and object. The ear establishes a 'more correct' relationship between ourselves and others. It implies unity rather than division. Eye and ear need one another. Ear and eye are not alternatives." - Joachim-Ernst Berendt

"The meaning of life is felt through relationship... Relationship with others and with one’s own self... Parenting, teaching, serving, creating. Learning from nature, the sages, our peers, from our emerging selves in a state of becoming." - Jonas Salk

"The "morphogenic" relationship of eternity to time is not to be thought of as sequential. Moreover, eternity being by definition outside or beyond temporality, transcendent of all categories, whether of virtue or of reason (being and nonbeing, unity and multiplicity, love and justice, forgiveness and wrath), the term and concept "God" is itself but a metaphor of the unknowing mind, connotative, not only beyond itself, but beyond thought... metaphors are equivalent as alternative signs of the high mystical experience of an absorption of mortal appearance in immortal being; for which another historical figure of speech is the "End of the World."" - Joseph Campbell

"Any judgment we make, no matter of whom, registers in the heart as a disruption of relationship, and the heart dutifully responds on behalf of our defense, shifting neural, hormonal, and electromagnetic systems from relational to defensive. Creator and created are giving rise to each other, we are judged as we have judged." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe

"By observing a supposed objective truth out there, we become passive victims relieved of responsibility. Instead, we can use our eyes in active vision, to see with, not through. Rather than compounding our neighbor’s error through intellectual condemnation of him, we can enter actively into that relationship through our heart. Freeing him from error in our mind’s eye, we open him to deliverance in his own. There is only one heart, and it can take on any form." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe

"The toddler is allowed to regulate his own exploratory behavior. What occurs as a result of this entire mechanism is that nature’s imperative to explore the world at large is overwhelmed by the greater imperative to avoid the pain of a broken relationship with the life-giving caregiver. What will be developed in the child is a capacity for deception as he tries to maintain some vestige of integrity while outwardly appearing to conform. Living a lie to survive a lying culture, the child forgets the truth of who he really is." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe

"Making mental connections is our most critical learning tool - the essence of human intelligence: to forge links; to go beyond the given; to see patterns, relationship, context." - Marilyn Ferguson

"The natural and primitive relationship of soul to soul is a relationship of beauty. For beauty is the only language of the soul... It has no other life, it can produce nothing else." -

"Love is how you stay alive, even after you're gone ... Death ends a life, not a relationship." - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom

"The power of thought is the only thing over which any human being has complete, unquestionable means of control - a fact so astounding that it connotes a close relationship between the mind of man and the source of all power - Infinite Intelligence." - Napoleon Hill

"The yen to become wanderers among the stars involves more than the need to satisfy a cosmic curiosity. Basically, it flows out of an instinctive need to evolve. We belong to an unfinished species. We have limitless capacities for growth; indeed, our uniqueness lies in our ability to steer our own evolution. The destination becomes visible through an enlarged perspective. The greatest adventure within the reach of a sentient species is seeing itself in an expanding relationship." - Norman Cousins

"The enduring value of the relationship to the land might be best measured by the extent to which it evolves beyond self-interest. All healthy relationships entail sacrifice and are never solely about what makes one person feel good, but are about what’s also good for someone else. Relationship implies a responsibility that goes beyond one’s own dreams." - Peter Forbes

"The enduring value of the relationship to the land might best be measured by the extent to which it evolves beyond self-interest. All healthy relationships entail sacrifice and are never solely about what makes one person feel good, but are about what's also good for someone else. Relationship implies a responsibility that goes beyond one's own dreams." - Peter Forbes

"Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Perhaps more than any other single factor, the intimate alchemy between the healer and the patient helps mobilize the body's natural resources. The mere presence of a healer often evokes hope in the patient and an expectation of recovery. When the two people create a partnership based on compassion, trust, and shared decision-making, and when the relationship nurtures the patient's hope for a positive outcome, even seemingly incurable diseases sometimes go into remission.... insistently restoring the human heart to the practice of medicine. Rather than treating patients as disease processes, they risk bringing their full humanness to the therapeutic encounter. They not only call on their technological expertise, but on the inner qualities practiced by healers from time immemorial: patience, humility, compassion, and an ability to inspire and mobilize their patients' healing resources." - Ronald S. Miller

"Love is not only about the relationship between two people, it is an affair of the soul that embraces everything of importance to the soul, some of which may have nothing directly to do with the relationship." - Thomas Moore

"Our ancestors gives us something irreplaceable and precious in their relationship to us. They are truly our links with the eternal." - Thomas Moore

"Relationship is not a project, it is a grace." - Thomas Moore

"The ending of a relationship is as mysterious as its beginning... We tend to look for rational causes and to blame one of the parties for committing the crime of ending. Fate and its important relationship to the soul are forgotten... The soul in a relationship is not only contained in each individual, it is also contained in the relationship itself." - Thomas Moore

"The heart has its own reasons... The heart is a mystery - not a puzzle that can’t be solved, but a mystery in the religious sense: unfathomable, beyond manipulation, showing traces of the finger of God at work... Everything associated with the heart - relationship, emotion, passion - can only be grasped and appreciated with the tools of religion and poetry." - Thomas Moore

"The point in a relationship is not to make us feel good, but to lead us into a profound alchemy of soul that reveals to us any of the pathways and opening that are the geography of our own destiny and potentiality." - Thomas Moore

"The soulful relationship asks to be honored for what it is, not for what we wish it could be. It has little to do with our intentions, expectations, and moral requirements." - Thomas Moore

"Death doesn’t erase a relationship, it simply places it in a different context." - Thomas Moore

"What appears to be a fully earthly relationship between two human individuals is at the same time a path toward far deeper experiences of the soul." - William A. Ward, fully William Arthur Ward

"Sadness is a great obstacle to serving the Almighty. A person who has transgressed should not become excessively sad since this will prevent him from further spiritual growth. One should feel deep regret for the wrong he has done and then continue to feel joy in his relationship with the Almighty since he has sincere regret and is resolved not to repeat his transgression." - Baal Shem Tov, given name Yisroel ben Eliezer

"Eternity cannot be defined by time, or have any relationship to it." -

"Ordinarily when we talk about the human as the advanced product of evolution and the mind as being the most advanced product of evolution, there is an implication that we are advanced out of and away from the structure of the exterior world in which we have evolved, as if a separate product had been packaged, wrapped up, and delivered from a production line. The view I am presenting proposes a mechanism more and more interlocked with the totality of the exterior. This mechanism has no separate existence at all, being in a thousand ways united with and continuously interacting with the whole exterior domain. In fact there is no exterior red object with a tremendous mind linked to it by only a ray of light. The red object is a composite product of matter and mechanism evolved in permanent association with a most elaborate interlock. There is no tremor in what we call the "outside world" that is not locked by a thousand chains and gossamers to inner structures that vibrate and move with it and are a part of it. The reason for the painfulness of all philosophy is that in the past, in its necessary ignorance of the unbelievable domains of partnership that have evolved in the relationship between ourselves and the world around us, it dealt with what indeed have been a tragic separation and isolation. Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Herbert Land

"To affirm the priority of Being over existents is to already decide the essence of philosophy; it is to subordinate the relation with someone, who is an existent, (the ethical relation) to a relation with the Being of existents, which, impernsonal, permits the apprehension, the domination of existents (a relationship of knowing), subordinates justice to freedom. " - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

"Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one "object" of love. " - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

"The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

"Psychoanalysis, which interprets the human being as a socialized being, and the psychic apparatus as essentially developed and determined through the relationship of the individual to society, must consider it a duty to participate in the investigation of sociological problems to the extent the human being or his/her psyche plays any part at all." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

"I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the "growth" of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. Love is a productive orientation for which it is essential that there be present at the same time: concern, responsibility, and respect for and knowledge of the object of the union." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

"If appropriate choices are made humans may yet live in an integral relationship with the earth community. If they are not made, some believe natural disasters will sweep over the earth radically altering life in ways that are unforeseeable, but are expecited to severlely diminish complex webs of life and render whole species extinct." -