Great Throughts Treasury

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

Edward Howard Griggs

English Author, Biographer and Inspirational Speaker

"We crave freedom, but freedom is never an end in itself; it is a means to be used for further aims. Its value lies in the extent to which it can assist the development of life. To possess freedom with no life for which to use it is but the bitterest farce. Life never means complete freedom, and every action and relation is an added bond. Life is to be attained, not through a non-moral freedom of caprice, but through a glad welcoming and loyal fulfillment of every bond and obligation which comes in the daily path of life."

"Peace among nations, like happiness for the individual, is not an end, but a by-product that usually comes when you live right."

"By far the larger part of it comes in life itself through the two great primary channels of action and experience — the work that we do and the relations we sustain in love and friendship to other lives."

"It is, nevertheless, just such work, done cheerfully and loyally, to a high purpose, through the succession of days, that builds into the human spirit the noblest elements of culture."

"Thus everyone needs a vocation — rich or poor, cultivated or ignorant, man or woman, in the home or out of it—each of us must find a vocation and fulfil loyally our work in it, to achieve and keep the sane, affirmative wisdom that is the basis of all noble living."

"Every experience, however bitter, has its lesson, and to focus one’s attention on the lesson helps one overcome the bitterness."