Great Throughts Treasury

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

Charles Henry Parkhurst

American Clergyman and Social Reformer

"Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load."

"Purpose is what gives life a meaning."

"The man who lives by himself and for himself is likely to be corrupted by the company he keeps."

"The heart has eyes that the brain knows nothing of."

"There is always the possibility of beauty where there is an unsealed human eye; of music where there is an unstopped human ear; and of inspiration where there is a receptive human spirit."

"A man’s longest purposes will be his best purposes. It is true, life is short and uncertain; but it is better to live on the short arc of a large circle than to describe the whole circumference of a small circle."

"All true manliness grows around a core of divineness."

"All great discoveries are made by those whose feelings run ahead of their thinking."

"Faith is mind at its best, its bravest, and its fiercest. Faith is thought become poetry, and absorbing into itself the soul’s great passions. Faith is intellect carried up to its transfigurement."

"The safest words are always those which bring us most directly to facts."

"Sin spoils the spirit’s delicacy, and unwillingness deadens its susceptibility."

"Faith is the very heroism and enterprise of intellect. Faith is not a passivity but a faculty. Faith is a power, the material of effect. Faith is a kind of winged intellect. The great workmen of history have been men who believed like giants."

"Purpose directs energy, and purpose makes energy."

"Home interprets heaven. Home is heaven for beginners."

"Virtue is safe only when it is inspired."

"The world’s salvation commenced in God’s heart, and is contained in the throb of every human heart that carries in it the beat of the heavenly pulse. And when our work is finished, the value that we have been to the world will have to be estimated by the amount of love-deposit we have been able to leave in the treasury of the world’s life."