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

Ezra Taft Benson

The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it.

Belief | Experiment | Family | Freedom | Future | Genius | God | Government | Heaven | History | Inspiration | Knowledge | Land | Man | Men | Mission | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Sense | Government | God |

Faith Baldwin

Men's private self-worlds are rather like our geographical world's seasons, storm, and sun, deserts, oases, mountains and abysses, the endless-seeming plateaus, darkness and light, and always the sowing and the reaping.

Balance | Day | Grief | Law | Life | Life | Little | Love | Loss |

Felix Adler

The divine in man is our sole ground for believing that there is anything divine in the universe outside of man. Man is the revealer of the divine. At bottom, the world is to be interpreted in terms of joy, but of a joy that includes all the pain, includes it and transforms it and transcends it. The Light of the World is a light that is saturated with the darkness which it has overcome and transfigured.

Better | Mourn | Question | Right | Will |

Ezra Taft Benson

Our forefathers left us a free government which is a miracle of faith — strong, durable, marvelously workable. Yet it can remain so only as long as we understand it, believe in it, devote ourselves to it, and, when necessary, fight for it.

Better | Desire | God | Good | Life | Life | Man | Men | Progress | Rights | Sacred | God |

Ezra Taft Benson

With all my heart I love our great nation. I have lived and traveled abroad just enough to make me appreciate rather fully what we have in America. To me the U. S. is not just another nation. It is not just one of a family of nations. The U. S. is a nation with a great mission to perform for the benefit and blessing of liberty-loving people everywhere.

Books | Church | Counsel | Desire | Duty | Evil | Faith | God | Good | Government | Influence | Law | Lord | Love | Meaning | Means | Men | Morality | People | Principles | Qualities | Receive | Religion | Right | Rule | Will | Wisdom | Wise | Government | Counsel | God | Learn |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

Chance | Ideas | Man | People | Right | Intellect |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

You have been second always. Tragical? No. You preferred it to the usual thing: One dull man, dulling and uxorious, one average mind- with one thought less, each year.

People |

Ezra Taft Benson

I donÂ’t know how you feel, my brethren and sisters, but IÂ’d rather be dead than to lose my liberty. I have no fear weÂ’ll ever lose it because of invasion from the outside. But I do have fear that it may slip away from us because of our own indifference, our own negligence, as citizens of this land. And so I plead with you this morning that you take an active interest in matters pertaining to the future of this country.

Circumstances | Control | Destroy | Duty | Eternal | God | Government | Individual | Inspiration | Liberty | Men | People | Right | Rights | Will | Government | God |

Ezra Taft Benson

Let us not be deceived in the sifting days ahead. Let us rally together on principle behind the prophet as guided by the promptings of the Spirit. We should continue to speak out for freedom and against socialism and communism. We should continue to come to the aid of patriots, programs, and organizations that are trying to save our Constitution through every legal and moral means possible.

God | Love | Men | People | Teach | God |

Ezra Taft Benson

The sad and shocking story of what has happened in America in recent years must be told. Our people must have the facts. There is safety in an informed public. There is real danger in a complacent, uninformed citizenry. This is our real danger today. Yes, the truth must be told even at the risk of destroying, in large measure, the influence of men who are widely respected and loved by the American people. The stakes are high. Freedom and survival is the issue.

Lord | Question |

Felix Adler

By what sort of experience are we led to the conviction that spirit exists ? On the whole, by searching, painful experience. The rose Religion grows on a thorn-bush, and we must not be afraid to have our fingers lacerated by the thorns if we would pluck the rose.

Good | Life | Life |

Ezra Taft Benson

We had better take our small pain now than our greater loss later. There were souls who wished afterwards that they had stood and fought with Washington and the founding fathers, but they waited too long—they passed up eternal glory. There has never been a greater time than now to stand up against entrenched evil. And while the gentiles established the Constitution, we have a divine mandate to preserve it. But unfortunately today in this freedom struggle, many gentiles are showing greater wisdom in their generation than the children of light.

Attention | Blessings | Evil | Faith | Focus | Freedom | Individual | Life | Life | Principles | Reading | Will | Learn |

Felix Adler

It may be impossible for a man by merely willing it to add wings to his body, but it is possible for any man, by merely willing it, to add wings to his soul. This perennial miracle of the moral nature is capable of happening at any time.

Death | Enemy | Fear | Life | Life |

Ezra Taft Benson

It was from him [Joseph Smith] that I learned that the wife of my bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity; and that the refined sympathies and affections which endeared us to each other emanated from the fountain of divine eternal love. It was from him that I learned that we might cultivate these affections, and grow and increase in the same to all eternityÂ… 'It was from him that I learned the true dignity and destiny of a son of God, clothed with an eternal priesthood, as the patriarch and sovereign of his [family]. It was from him that I learned that the highest dignity of womanhood was, to stand as a queen and priestess to her husband. We qualify for these blessings when we go with a companion to the house of the Lord and receive the sealing ordinances that bind the family unit beyond the grave. These blessings are received in no other way, for as the Lord has decreed, 'Except ye abide my law ye cannot attain to this glory', which glory is an eternal.

Belief | Credit | Faith | Glory | God | Land | Men | Plan | Principles | Purpose | Purpose | Rights | God |

Ezra Taft Benson

Our Creator endowed each one of us with certain rights at birth, among which are the rights to life, liberty, speech, and conscience, to name a few. These are not just human rights; they are divine rights. When these rights are not permitted expression by a nation, that nation becomes inhibited in its progress and development, and its leaders are responsible before God for suffocating sacred rights. This native endowment is what separates man from the animals. It causes men to want to be good and to seek higher aspirations. It creates in man a desire to better his life and his station in life.

Business | Freedom | Future | Guarantee | Individual | Judgment | People | Power | Public | Rights | System | Wants | Wishes | Business |

Ezra Taft Benson

That government is best which governs the least, so taught the courageous founders of this nation. This simple declaration is diametrically opposed to the all too common philosophy that the government should protect and support one from the cradle to the grave. The policy of the Founding Fathers has made our people and our nation strong. The opposite leads inevitably to moral decay.

Accident | Cost | Danger | Debt | Defense | Despot | Enjoyment | Eternal | Faith | God | Government | Inspiration | Life | Life | Man | Means | Need | Nothing | People | Principles | Prophecy | Receive | Responsibility | Rights | Theories | Trust | Vigilance | Weakness | Will | Wise | Words | Government | Danger | God | Privilege | Understand |

Ezra Taft Benson

Unless we do his teachings, we do not demonstrate faith in him.

Capacity | Children | Free enterprise | People | System | Will | World |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.

People |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.

Enough | Life | Life |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

The ultimate vision is to instate in the Muslim world the notion of multiculturalism, which is part of our heritage and history, part of the fundamental, mainstream ideals of Islam.

Argument | Earth | Faith | People | Religion | Tradition | Truth | Wrong |