Great Throughts Treasury

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

Robert Collyer

English-born American Unitarian Clergyman

"A man's best friends are his ten fingers."

"Beautiful is the activity that works for good, and the stillness that waits for good; blessed the self-sacrifice that waits for good; blessed the self-sacrifice of the one, and the self-forgetfulness of the other."

"Faith makes the discords of the present the harmonies of the future."

"God hides some ideal in every human soul. At some time in our life we feel a trembling, fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to do our best."

"Now, believe me, God hides some ideal in every human soul. At some time in our life we feel a trembling, fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to do our best."

"Old age is the repose of life; the rest that precedes the rest that remains."

"The fineness and strength essential to our best being, and to make us do our work, come by the hammer and the fire, by the thorn in the flesh, the trouble and pain in our life, which may act in us as the fire acts in the iron, welding the fiber afresh."

"There is a great deal we never think of calling religion that is still fruit unto God, and garnered by Him in the harvest. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, patience, goodness. I affirm that if these fruits are found in any form, whether you show your patience as a woman nursing a fretful child, or as a man attending to the vexing detail of a business, or as a physician following the dark mazes of sickness, or as a mechanic fitting the joints and valves of a locomotive; being honest and true besides, you bring forth truth unto God."

"Trust in God, as Moses did, let the way be ever so dark; and it shall come to pass that your life at last shall surpass even your longing. Not, it may be, in the line of that longing, that shall be as it pleaseth God; but the glory is as sure as the grace, and the most ancient heavens are not more sure than that."

"Ingersoll’s atheism can never become an institution; it can never be more than a destitution. "