Great Throughts Treasury

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

Related Quotes

Frank Drake

It is arrogance to think that the earthbound have any true grasp of the complex meaning, or meanings, of life; we have not yet gathered all the data. Our own significance, our ultimate potential and our ensemble of possible destinies will be understood only by finding and studying the other intelligent creatures of space. Thus, a prime task for us is to seek these other intelligent civilizations and join them in shared knowledge. We now have the means to do so, and if we are as noble as we think, we will proceed vigorously with this enterprise.

Arrogance | Knowledge | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Space | Will | Wisdom | Think |

Nathanael Emmons, also Nathaniel Emmons

Real holiness has love for its essence, humility for its clothing, the good of others as its employment, and the honor of God as its end.

God | Good | Honor | Humility | Love | Wisdom | God |

Nathanael Emmons, also Nathaniel Emmons

The highest graces of music flow from the feelings of the heart.

Feelings | Heart | Music | Wisdom |

Horace William Baden Donegan

Peace comes only from loving, from mutual self-sacrifice and self-forgetfulness. Few today have humility or wisdom enough to know the world's deep need of love. We are too much possessed by national and racial and cultural pride.

Enough | Forgetfulness | Humility | Love | Need | Peace | Pride | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Wisdom | World |

Nathaniel Emmons

The highest graces of music flow from the feelings of the heart.

Feelings | Heart | Music | Wisdom |

Ann Faraday

Dreams reflect not only actual happenings, but also a whole host of thoughts and feelings that passed us by during the day because we were too busy or unwilling to catch them. [Besides expressing] the thoughts of our heart... powerful revealers of hidden talents, buried beauty, and unsuspected creative energy. They urge us to recognize that we are actually a lot nicer than we have hitherto realized.

Beauty | Day | Dreams | Energy | Feelings | Heart | Wisdom |

James Hadfield, fully Captain James Arthur Hadfield

It is one of the many paradoxes of psychology that the pursuit of happiness defeats its own purpose. We find happiness only when we do not directly seek it. An analogy will make this clear. In listening to music at a concert, we experience pleasurable feelings only so long as our attention is directed towards the music. But if in order to increase our happiness we give all our attention to our subjective feeling of happiness, it vanishes. Nature contrives to make it impossible for anyone to attain happiness by turning into himself.

Attention | Experience | Feelings | Listening | Music | Nature | Order | Psychology | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

True religion teaches us to reverence what is under us, to recognize humility and poverty, and despite mockery and disgrace, wretchedness, suffering, and death as things divine.

Death | Disgrace | Humility | Mockery | Poverty | Religion | Reverence | Suffering | Wisdom |

Brian Greer

There is no separation between a patient’s neurobiology, spiritual life, life perspectives, and quality of life force. Words, and spiritual/therapeutic interventions can tangibly affect a patient’s neurochemistry and physical health just as assuredly as psycho-pharmacological drugs can tangibly affect a patient’s feelings and thoughts... I have found that working with the meaning of a patient’s illness can profoundly alter not only the prognosis but can influence and give meaning to all other aspects of a patient’s life. Depression, for example, is often a direct communication from the soul that one’s belief system is not working... It is all too easy, and part of the human condition, to be misled by our lower half into believing that the sensory world is all that’s real.

Belief | Depression | Example | Feelings | Force | Health | Influence | Life | Life | Meaning | Soul | System | Wisdom | Words | World |

Washington Irving

The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated, except by those whose feelings are withered by vitiated society. Holy, simple, and beautiful in its construction, it is the emblem of all we can imagine of fidelity and truth.

Feelings | Fidelity | Mother | Society | Strength | Truth | Wisdom | Child |

John Jay

Pride, arrogance and lust of conquest are the natural and bitter fruits of military preparation.

Arrogance | Conquest | Lust | Pride | Wisdom |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

A man’s life begins with the illusion that a long, long time and w hole world lie before him, and he begins with the foolish conceit that he has plenty of time for all his many claims.

Illusion | Life | Life | Man | Plenty | Time | Wisdom | World |

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

We love music for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch.

Feelings | Love | Music | Wisdom |

J. Martin Klotsche

Intelligence is derived from two words - inter and legere - inter meaning "between" and legere meaning "to choose." An intelligent person, therefore, is one who has learned "to choose between." He knows that good is better than evil, that confidence should supersede fear, that love is superior to hate, that gentleness is better than cruelty, forbearance than intolerance, compassion than arrogance and that truth has more virtue than ignorance.

Arrogance | Better | Compassion | Confidence | Cruelty | Evil | Fear | Forbearance | Gentleness | Good | Hate | Ignorance | Intelligence | Intolerance | Love | Meaning | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Words |

Peter London

The solution to the problems posed in art do not lie outside in the realms of technique and formula; they reside in the realm of fresh thinking about perennial issues, in honest feelings and awakened spirit.

Art | Feelings | Problems | Spirit | Thinking | Wisdom | Art |

Frederick Mayer

Real education belongs to the future; most of our education is a form of tribal conditioning, a pilgrimage in routine and premature adjustment. When education stirs our innermost feelings and loyalties, when it awakens us from the slumber of lethargy, when it brings individuals together through understanding and compassion, it becomes our foremost hope for lasting greatness.

Compassion | Education | Feelings | Future | Greatness | Hope | Lethargy | Understanding | Wisdom |

Domingo Moles

Life is a conscious space between two eternities. It is a canyon separating never from forever. It is the realm where feelings are born in both sprit and flesh. Life only gives meaning to the time a man lives. Only the living have meaning... The projection of man in his work is the meaning of life. Unless a man creates something outside himself, the meaning of his life will vanish at the instant of his death.

Death | Feelings | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Space | Time | Will | Wisdom | Work |