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

Charles Kingsley

What right has any free, reasonable soul on earth to sell himself for a shilling a day to murder any man, right or wrong?

Day | Earth | Man | Murder | Right | Soul | Wisdom | Wrong | Murder |

Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein

The Divine Mind communicates with the human mind through the imagination. A prayer, therefore, should be offered in the form of a mental image. Man must visualize the thing he desires, he must use his imaginative powers to form his petition in terms clearly outlined in his own mind. The profound concentration of attention and thought which this form of prayer requires fills also the heart with deep earnestness and devotion. Man must pray whole-heartedly as well as wholemindedly; he must believe in his heart that his well-being depends completely upon his prayer.

Attention | Devotion | Earnestness | Heart | Imagination | Man | Mind | Prayer | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Abraham Isaac Kook

The soul sings all the time; joy and sweetness are her garments; high-minded tenderness envelops her.

Joy | Soul | Tenderness | Time | Wisdom |

Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL

For it is unknown what is the real nature of the soul, whether it be born with the bodily frame or be infused at the moment of birth, whether it perishes along with us, when death separates the soul and body, or whether it visits the shades of Pluto and bottomless pits, or enters by divine appointment into other animals.

Birth | Body | Death | Nature | Soul | Wisdom |

Oscar Edward Maurer

Waste not your strength trying to push shut doors which God is opening. Neither wear yourself out in keeping open doors which ought to be forever sealed. Some episode in your life, over which you are anxious, is closed. it is in the past. Whatever its memory, you cannot change it. But you can shut the door. Go into some silent place of thought. Test your self-respect. Ask your soul, "Have I emerged from this experience with honor, or if not, can honor be retrieved?" And if your soul answers, "Yes," close then the door to that Past; hang a garland over the portal if you will, but come away without tarrying. The east is aflame with the radiance of the morning, and before you stands many another door, held open by the hand of God.

Change | Experience | God | Honor | Life | Life | Memory | Past | Respect | Self | Soul | Strength | Thought | Waste | Will | Wisdom | God |

Stephane Mallarme, born Étienne Mallarmé

Every soul is a melody which needs renewing.

Melody | Soul | Wisdom |

John Locke

It is an established opinion among some men that there are in the understanding certain innate principles, some primary notions, stamped, as it were, upon the mind of man which the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world with it. It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness of this supposition, if I should only show how many men obtain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any such innate impressions... Let us suppose the mind to be a blank tablet; how comes it to be furnished? To this answer in one word, from experience.

Experience | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Opinion | Principles | Soul | Understanding | Wisdom | World |

Maria Jane M’Intosh

Aspirations after the holy, the only aspiration in which the human soul can be assured that it will never meet with disappointment.

Aspiration | Soul | Will | Wisdom | Aspiration |

Wynton Marsalis

On one level, life is the process of seeking out and enjoying experiences - from the transcendent to the tragic. Life has as cyclical pattern of movement and appreciation; even when you’re not doing anything, you’re probably in a situation you sought. On another level, life is the experience of the self’s interaction with the world. The self can be broken down into three main elements and their corresponding activities: first, the heart (knowing compassion, receiving and giving love); second, the intellect (acquiring and digesting information); third, the senses (acting and being acted upon). It is the soul, however, that focuses and inspires all three the soul gives us resilience -an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship... The meaning of life can’t be understood without first looking at the self and its interaction with the world. In effect, this amounts to examining the inner workings of the soul of the universe.

Appreciation | Compassion | Experience | Giving | Heart | Knowing | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Resilience | Self | Soul | Universe | Wisdom | World | Intellect |

Charles Robert Maturin

The soul share not the body’s rest.

Body | Rest | Soul | Wisdom |

Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL

The mind has more to do with holding the fastnesses of life and has more sovereign sway over it than the power of the soul. For without the understanding and the mind no part of the soul can maintain itself in the frame the smallest fraction of time.

Life | Life | Mind | Power | Soul | Time | Understanding | Wisdom |

Alexander Maclaren

As the flowers follow the sun, and silently hold up their petals to be tinted and enlarged by its shining, so must we, if we would know the joy of God, hold our souls, wills, hearts, and minds, still before Him, whose voice commands, whose love warns, whose truth makes fair our whole being. God speaks for the most pat in such silence only. If the soul be full of tumult and jangling voices, His voice is little likely to be heard.

God | Joy | Little | Love | Silence | Soul | Truth | Wills | Wisdom | God |

Joseph Fort Newton

To be happy is easy enough if we give ourselves, forgive others, and live with thanksgiving. No self-centered person, no ungrateful soul can ever be happy, much less make anyone else happy. Life is giving, not getting.

Enough | Giving | Happy | Life | Life | Self | Soul | Wisdom | Forgive |

George Meredith

There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by.

Body | Nothing | Soul | Wisdom |

Alfred Mercier

There was a wise man in the east whose constant prayer was that he might see today with the eyes of tomorrow.

Man | Prayer | Tomorrow | Wisdom | Wise |

Maurice Nicoll

We need to get rid of some false meanings that we give to the words eternal and eternity. The psychological idea connected with eternal life cannot be limited to the view that man is changed into another state at death, merely by the act of dying. It would be far more correct to say that it refers, first of all, to some change that man is capable of undergoing now, in this life, and one that is connected with the attainment of unity. The modern term psychology means literally the science of the soul. But in former times there actually existed a science of the soul based upon the idea that man is an imperfect state but capable of reaching a further state... No totality-act is possible; the will is separate from knowledge, the feeling from intellect.

Attainment | Change | Death | Eternal | Eternity | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Means | Need | Psychology | Science | Soul | Unity | Will | Wisdom | Words |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The smallest atom of truth represents some man’s bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker’s grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.

Agony | Grave | Hell | Man | Soul | Truth | Wisdom |