Great Throughts Treasury

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

Troubles

"Abiding happiness is not simply a possibility, but a duty all may live above the troubles of life worry is a poison and happiness is a medicine." - Newell Dwight Hillis

"Our life's a stage, a comedy: either learn to play and take it lightly, or bear its troubles patiently." - Palladas NULL

"Strive ceaselessly; never be impatient. Once the finality is achieved, incarnation of troubles will be over in a second, just as when light is admitted within a room that has been locked for decades, the darkness vanishes instantly." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Worrying wastes time and energy. Use your mind instead to try to make some positive effort... Nothing is impossible, unless you think it is... Give your troubles to God. When you worry, it is your funeral, all arranged by yourself." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Smiling away your troubles requires a clear conscience that harbor no insincerity." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"I should like to suggest to you that the cause of all the economic troubles is that we have an economic system which tries to maintain an equality of value between two things, which it would be better to recognize from the beginning as of unequal value." - Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac

"Giving kindness does us as much good as receiving it. . . . The true benefit of kindness is being kind. Perhaps more than any other factor, kindness gives meaning and value to our life, raises us above our troubles and our battles, and makes us feel good about ourselves." - Piero Ferrucci

"At the time of creation the light of G-d flowed from the sphere of the spiritual down to the physical world through a series of vessels or emanations.] But the vessels proved unable to contain the Divine Light. They broke. This primordial catastrophe is called shevirat hakeilim, the Breaking of the Vessels. You can better understand it with an analogy. Think of a man who is deeply troubled and depressed. Suddenly he receives an exhilarating piece of good news. His troubles are over. Instead of jumping for joy, the man will break down crying. The “bright light” of the good news was too much for him. Similarly, shevirat hakeilim means that the vessels broke because they could not encompass the brilliant splendor of the luminescent Divine Light" - Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz, aka Pinchas or Pinchos of Koretz

"The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed, my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers are kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands, while the many natures now content to follow either to the exclusion of the other are forcibly debarred from doing so. This is what I have hesitated to say so long, knowing what a paradox it would sound; for it is not easy to see that there is no other road to happiness, either for society or the individual. " - Plato NULL

"It is customary to consider forgetfulness a disadvantage. I believe it is an advantage. Knowing to forget means loosening the troubles of the past." - Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL

"Egotism is of the nature of tamas; it is begotten by ignorance. On account of the barrier of ego one does not see God. 'All troubles come to an end when the ego dies.' It is futile to be egotistic. Neither body nor wealth will last." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"Maya is nothing but the egotism of the embodied soul. This egotism has covered everything like a veil. 'All troubles come to an end when the ego dies.' If by the grace of God a man but once realizes that he is not the doer, then he at once becomes a Jivanmukta. Though living in the body, he is liberated. He has nothing else to fear. It is through God's grace that you understand that. The doubts of the mind will not disappear without His grace. Doubts do not disappear without Self-realization." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"Behind it was that vast suspension bridge which always troubles me because it reminds me that in this mechanized age I am as little able to understand my environment as any primitive woman who thinks that a waterfall is inhabited by a spirit, and indeed less so, for her opinion might from a poetical point of view be correct." - Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West

"Why Is Growth Ending? Many financial pundits have cited serious troubles in the US economy " - Richard Heinberg

"Confidence arises from faith when troubles make it the stronger. Therefore it is a true evidence of grace, when confidence increase with opposition, great troubles breeding great confidence." - Richard Sibbes (or Sibbs)

"Those who are given to quarrelling with themselves always lack comfort, and through their infirmities they are prone to feed on such bitter things as will most nourish that disease which troubles them ... We must not judge of ourselves always according to present feeling ... We must beware of false reasoning, such as: because our fire does not blaze out as others, therefore we have no fire at all. By false conclusions we may come to sin against the commandment in bearing false witness against ourselves." - Richard Sibbes (or Sibbs)

"He tried to drown his troubles but they knew how to swim." - Rita Mae Brown

"Anyone approaching the Sermon on the Mount is wise to remember a saying from Mark Twain, who was more honest about his troubles than most of us are about ours. He had heard people complain that the Bible is hard to understand. But he said he was bothered more by the parts of the Bible that he could understand than by the parts he could not understand. This statement fits the Sermon on the Mount. Occasionally, as we study it, we find ourselves bothered by the first problem. We do not understand, and we wish we might know with certainty exactly what Jesus meant. But more often the words are so clear that we can have no doubt about their meaning. Then the real trouble comes, because we know what a change they call for in our lives, and we hesitate to make that change. We feel uneasy when we face a description of ourselves as God would have us be." - Roger L. Shinn, fully Roger Lincoln Shinn

"To boast of the help you gave a brother in need is to cancel the good of your deed." - Samuel ha-Nagid, born Samuel ibn Naghrela or Naghrillah

"Draft registration destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen!" - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"O, happy the soul that saw its own faults." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"That's how you came here, like a star without a name. Move across the night sky with those anonymous lights." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Once one has finished ringing, one should get out of the bell tower." - Russian Proverbs

"When he is brought to nothing, the highest degree of humility, the spiritual union between his soul and God will be effected. The journey does not consist on recreations, experiences and spiritual feelings, but in the living, sensory and spiritual, exterior and interior death of the cross." - Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL

"The measure of love is to love without measure." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"You say you experience great difficulty in the mission. Alas! Monsieur, there is no lot in life where there is nothing to be endured." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Charles Augustin Sainte-Veuve

"There is nothing left to us but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls in well-doing upon Him, who is God omnipotent." - Samuel Rutherford

"Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes strongly has within him the gift of miracles." - Samuel Smiles

"Most people today fail to recognize that happiness is a fairly recent aspiration of the human race. For most of history, survival was the goal." - Sydney J. Harris

"Thus we obtain our concept of the unconscious from the theory of repression. The repressed is the prototype of the unconscious for us." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise." - Simone Weil

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State." - Thomas Jefferson

"When the absolute Reality is known, it is seen to be without any individual selves, and devoid of any objective forms; All past [mental and physical] actions which lead to hell are instantly wiped away. After the Awakening, there is only vast Emptiness; this vast universe of forms ceases to exist [outside of one's Self]. Here, one sees neither sin nor bliss, neither loss nor gain. In the midst of the eternal Serenity, no questions arise; The dust of ignorance which has accumulated on the unpolished mirror for ages, Is now, and forever, cleared away in the vision of Truth." - Maximus of Tyre, fully Cassius Maximus Tyrius NULL

"Sweet stream that winds through yonder glade, Apt emblem of a virtuous maid Silent and chaste she steals along, Far from the world's gay busy throng: With gentle yet prevailing force, Intent upon her destined course; Graceful and useful all she does, Blessing and blest where'er she goes; Pure-bosom'd as that watery glass, And Heaven reflected in her face. " - William Cowper

"God Hides His People - To lay the soul that loves him low, Becomes the Only–wise: To hide beneath a veil of woe, The children of the skies. Man, though a worm, would yet be great; Though feeble, would seem strong; Assumes an independent state, By sacrilege and wrong. Strange the reverse, which, once abased, The haughty creature proves! He feels his soul a barren waste, Nor dares affirm he loves. Scorned by the thoughtless and the vain, To God he presses near; Superior to the world's disdain, And happy in its sneer. Oh welcome, in his heart he says, Humility and shame! Farewell the wish for human praise, The music of a name! But will not scandal mar the good That I might else perform? And can God work it, if he would, By so despised a worm? Ah, vainly anxious!—leave the Lord To rule thee, and dispose; Sweet is the mandate of his word, And gracious all he does. He draws from human littleness His grandeur and renown; And generous hearts with joy confess The triumph all his own. Down, then, with self–exalting thoughts; Thy faith and hope employ, To welcome all that he allots, And suffer shame with joy. No longer, then, thou wilt encroach On his eternal right; And he shall smile at thy approach, And make thee his delight. " - William Cowper

"Wherever the citizen becomes indifferent to his fellows, so will the husband be to his wife, and the father of a family toward the members of his household." - Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt

"Voltaire has said if you want to talk to me knew what it says and select your saying. How could shrink and talk turns to if he dared section Almtnaakecon determine their and Jmlhm words, this is the first and the other in logic, and his heart and soul, that the subject is important in an interview to the most serious types of definition, identification and examination. It's a tough way, and exam where there is no mercy for the mind" - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"All we ever intended for him or expected of him was that he should continue to make people everywhere chuckle with him and at him. We didn't burden him with any social symbolism, we made him no mouthpiece for frustrations or harsh satire. Mickey was simply a little personality assigned to the purposes of laughter." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

"All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"George the First was always reckoned vile, but viler George the Second; and what mortal ever heard any good of George the Third? When from earth the Fourth descended, God be praised, the Georges ended!" - Walter Savage Landor

"It is man's consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset." - Victor Hugo

"Who gives his speech slightly missing the same." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"In cultivation, even if you do not become possessed by a demon, you must still have genuine wisdom and Dharma- selecting vision." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

"Evil can be a teacher, if you look at the wisdom of its negative power." - Tom Brown, Jr.

"Can'st thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose to the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude; and, in the calmest and most stillest night, with all appliances and means to boot, deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down! Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Henry IV, Part II, Act iii, Scene 1" - William Shakespeare

"O surely this morning all sorrow is hidden, all battle is hushed for this even at least; and no one this noontide may hunger, unbidden to the flowers and the singing and the joy of your feast where silent ye sit midst the world's tale increased." - William Morris

"Immortal life is something to be earned, by slow self-conquest, comradeship with Pain, and patient seeking after higher truths." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"But how to consider, the finite and the infinite in the fact of positing [se poser]? Is there a more or less perfect way of positing? What is, is. That there be birth and death in no way affects the absolute character of an affirmation that refers only to itself." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas