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

Russell Schweikart, fully Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart aka Schweikart

[The earth] is so small and so fragile and such a precious little spot in that universe that you can block it out with your thumb, and you realize that on that small spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you - all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love.

Art | Birth | Death | Earth | History | Little | Love | Means | Music | Poetry | Universe | Wisdom | Art |

Frederic Saunders

Whatever of goodness emanates from the soul, gathers its soft halo in the eyes; an if the heart be a lurking-place of crime, the eyes are sure to betray the secret. A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction assent, an enraged eye makes beauty a deformity; so you see, forsooth, the little organ plays no inconsiderable, if not a dominant, part.

Beauty | Contradiction | Crime | Heart | Little | Silence | Soul | Wisdom | Beauty |

Ravi Shankar, born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, aka Pandit

Our tradition teaches us that sound is God - Nada Brahma. The highest aim of our music is to reveal the essence of the universe it reflects.

God | Music | Sound | Tradition | Universe | Wisdom | God |

Richard and Greta Smolowe

We believe in a life continuum, and eternal life. Each incarnation or lifetime on earth is 'just a day in the classroom'... We believe the plane of greatest learning is the physical plane. It is up to all of us to make the most of each carnation. We believe that all there is in the universe is energy... and all energy forms, from subatomic particles to stars, are in a constant state of change and transformation... that interpreting energy frequencies on sensory bands creates the reality in which each life-form lives.

Change | Day | Earth | Energy | Eternal | Learning | Life | Life | Reality | Universe | Wisdom |

David Spangler

Ultimately, our purpose is to be so alive, compassionate and creative in our own lives that the whole universe quivers with excitement and enthusiasm and brings forth a new spirit, a new possibility, in our midst. Our purpose is to be both the womb and the midwife for the birthing into our world of a holy spirit filled with new potentials for life and creativity. We exist in order to quicken the creativity and spirit of our world so that new worlds, new wonders, new blessings may emerge... To truly appreciate the meaning of life, we must be prepared to let the meanings we have known stand in the presence of new insights and be transformed. We have no final answers, only the questions that lead to further discoveries, creativity and emergence. We are here that life may discover, know and express itself more abundantly for the blessing and fulfillment of all creation - past, present and potential.

Blessings | Creativity | Enthusiasm | Excitement | Fulfillment | Life | Life | Meaning | Order | Past | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Spirit | Universe | Wisdom | World |

Simone Weil

To love our neighbors as ourselves does not mean that we should love all people equally, for I do not have an equal love for all the modes of existence of myself. Nor does it mean that we should never make them suffer, for I do not refuse to make myself suffer. But we should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of it.

Existence | Love | People | Relationship | Universe | Wisdom |

Daniel Webster

Truth is always congruous and agrees with itself; every truth in the universe agrees with all others.

Truth | Universe | Wisdom |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual - namely to You.

Individual | Universe | Wisdom |

Robert Aris Willmott

Whatever is pure is also simple. It does not keep the eye on itself. The observer forgets the window in the landscape it displays. A fine style gives the view of fancy--its figures, its trees, or its palaces,--without a spot.

Style | Wisdom |

William Wordsworth

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

Harmony | Joy | Life | Life | Power | Quiet | Wisdom |

Edwin Percy Whipple

The eye observes only what the mind, the heart, and the imagination are gifted to see; and sight must be reinforced by insight before souls can be discerned as well as manners, ideas as well as objects, realities and relations as well as appearances and accidental connections.

Heart | Ideas | Imagination | Insight | Manners | Mind | Wisdom |

Henri Frédéric Amiel

I have traversed the universe from the deepest depths of the empyrean to the peristaltic movements of the atoms in the elementary cell. And on all sides stretched mysteries, marvels, and prodigies without limit, without number, and without end. I felt the unfathomable thought, of which the Universe is the symbols, live and burn within me; I touched, proved, tasted, embraced my nothingness and my immensity; I kissed the hem of the garments of god, and gave Him thanks for being Spirit and for being Life.

God | Life | Life | Spirit | Thought | Universe |

Abdul Baha, or ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, born `Abbás Effendí

God has given man the eye of investigation by which he may see and recognize truth. He has endowed man with ears that he may hear the message of reality, and conferred upon him the gift of reason by which he may discover things for himself. Man is not intended to see through the eyes of another, hear through another’s ears nor comprehend with another’s brain. Each human creature has individual endowment, power and responsibility in the creative plan of God.

God | Individual | Man | Plan | Power | Reality | Reason | Responsibility | Truth |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, and I have said that the body is not more than the soul, and nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is, and whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud, and I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, and to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, and there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, and there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd universe, and I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God, for I who am curious about each am not curious about God, (No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.) I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, in the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and everyone is sign'd by God's name, and I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go, others will punctually come for ever and ever.

Better | Body | God | Learning | Man | Men | Nothing | Object | Peace | Self | Soul | Sympathy | Will | Wisdom | Following | God | Understand |

William Wordsworth

That inward eye which is the bliss of solitude.

Solitude | Wisdom |

Louise Bogan

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

Beauty | Joy | Rest | Suffering | Universe | World | Beauty |

John Elof Boodin

We are material in the hands of the Genius of the universe for a still larger destiny that we cannot see in the everlasting rhythm of worlds.

Destiny | Genius | Universe |