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

Adlai Ewing Stevenson

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow whatever that search may lead us. The free mind is no barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.

Knowledge | Mind | Search | Value |

Albert Camus

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

Happy | Life | Life | Meaning | Search | Will | Happiness |

Alexis Carrel

The search for God is, indeed, an entirely personal undertaking. By the exercise of the normal activities of his consciousness, man may endeavor to reach an invisible reality both immanent in and transcending the material world. thus, he throws himself into the most audacious adventure that one can dare.

Adventure | Consciousness | God | Man | Reality | Search | World | God |

Alfred North Whitehead

Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God.

God | Human nature | Nature | Religion | Search |

Aristotle NULL

The search for truth is one way hard, and in another way easy. For it is evident that no one can master it fully, nor yet miss it wholly. But each adds a little to our knowledge of nature, and from all the facts assembled, there arises a certain grandeur.

Knowledge | Little | Nature | Search | Truth |

Arthur Koestler

The pursuit of science in itself is never materialistic. It is a search for the principles of law and order in the universe, and as such an essentially religious endeavor.

Law | Order | Principles | Science | Search | Universe |

Arthur C Clarke, formally Sir Arthur Charles Clark

A wise man once said that all human activity is a form of play. And the highest form of play is the search for Truth, Beauty and Love. What more is needed? Should there be a “meaning” as well, that will be a bonus. If we waste time looking for life’s meaning, we may have no time to live - or to play. Our graceful, smiling cousins in the sea may be wiser than us.

Beauty | Life | Life | Love | Man | Meaning | Play | Search | Time | Truth | Waste | Will | Wise | Beauty |

Author Unknown NULL

Today. Mend a quarrel. Search out a friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in a word or deed. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forego a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate, be kind, be gentle. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Worship your God. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Still speak it again. Speak it still once again.

Beauty | Complacency | Confidence | Earth | Enemy | Envy | Friend | God | Gratitude | Heart | Little | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Malice | Pleasure | Promise | Search | Suspicion | Time | Trust | Wonder | Worship | Wrong | Youth | Beauty | Forgive | Think |

Blaise Pascal

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

Nothing | Rest | Search | Truth |

Blaise Pascal

All the glory of greatness has no luster for people who are in search of understanding.

Glory | Greatness | People | Search | Understanding |

Bernie S. Siegel

Discovering the ways in which you are exceptional, the particular path you are meant to follow, is your business on this earth, whether you are afflicted or not. It's just that the search takes on a special urgency when you realize you are mortal.

Business | Earth | Mortal | Search | Business |

Charles Caleb Colton

We are ruined, not by what we really want, but by what we think we do; therefore, never go abroad in search of your wants: for if they be real wants they will come in search of you. He that buys what he does not want, will soon want what he cannot buy.

Search | Wants | Will | Think |

Charles Caleb Colton

Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter the temple of wisdom. When we are in doubt and puzzle out the truth by our own exertions, we have gained something that will stay by us and will serve us again. But if to avoid the trouble of the search we avail ourselves of the superior information of a friend, such knowledge will not remain with us; we have not bought, but borrowed it.

Doubt | Friend | Knowledge | Search | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Trouble |

Chinese Proverbs

All the universe is an inn; search not specially for a retreat of peace: all the people are your relatives; expect therefore troubles from them.

Peace | People | Search | Troubles | Universe |

Claude Bernard

The nature or very essence of phenomena, whether vital or mineral, will always remain unknown... Absolute knowledge could, therefore, leave nothing outside itself; and only on condition of knowing everything could man be granted its attainment. Man behaves as if he were destined to reach this absolute knowledge; and the incessant why which he puts to nature proves it. Indeed, this hope, constantly disappointed, constantly reborn, sustains and always will sustain successive generation sin the passionate search for truth.

Absolute | Attainment | Hope | Knowing | Knowledge | Man | Nature | Nothing | Phenomena | Search | Sin | Truth | Will |