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

Hal and Linda Kramer

... an emerging world based on cooperation rather than on competition, on affirmation rather than on competition, on affirmation of the human spirit rather than on self-doubt, and on the certainty that all humanity is connected.

Character | Competition | Cooperation | Doubt | Humanity | Self | Spirit | Wisdom | World |

Ya’akov Dov "Katzele" Katz

We are constantly repeating messages in our minds. If they are negative: “I’m a failure,” “The world is an awful place,” “Nothing ever goes right,” we make our lives miserable. We have the ability to consciously make an effort to repeat to our selves positive messages: “I have the ability to keep improving,” “The world contains many wonderful opportunities,” “Everything that happens to me can be used for growth”... Little by little they will have a positive effect on your personality and emotions.

Ability | Character | Effort | Emotions | Failure | Growth | Little | Nothing | Personality | Right | Will | World |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

Our unconscious existence is the real one and our conscious world a kind of illusion, an apparent reality constructed for a specific purpose like a dream which seems a reality as long as we are in it.

Character | Existence | Illusion | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | World |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Character | Heart | World |

James Russell Lowell

All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

Action | Character | World |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.

Character | Despair | Evil | World |

Layne Longfellow

You can only know the world through the world that you have known.

Character | Wisdom | World |

George Henry Lewes

Among the many strong servilities mistaken for piety, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world and vilifying human nature.

Character | God | Human nature | Nature | Piety | World | God |

James Russell Lowell

Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weight less than a single lovely action.

Action | Character | Man | World |

James Russell Lowell

Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.

Character | Day | World |

Elias L. Magoon

Existence was given us for action. Our worth is determined by the good deeds we do, rather than by the fine emotions we feel.

Action | Character | Deeds | Emotions | Existence | Good | Worth | Deeds |

Alexander Macleod

The influence of individual character extends from generation to generation. The world is molded by it.

Character | Individual | Influence | World |

Celia Luce

A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything out of focus. Hold it at a proper viewing distance and it can be examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway to eternity.

Character | Eternity | Focus | Wisdom | World | Trouble |

Chief Luther Standing Bear

Everything was possessed of personality, only different from us in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth. We learned to do what only the student of nature ever learns, and that was to feel beauty... Observation was certain to have its rewards. Interest, wonder, admiration grew, and the fact was appreciated that life was more than mere human manifestation; it was expressed in a multitude of forms. This appreciation enriched Lakota existence. Life was vivid and pulsating; nothing was casual and commonplace. The Indian lived - lived in every sense of the word - from his first to his last breath.

Admiration | Appreciation | Beauty | Blessings | Books | Character | Earth | Existence | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nature | Nothing | Observation | Personality | Sense | Wonder | World | Appreciation |

John Lubbock, fully Sir John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

The world would be both better and brighter if we would dwell on the duty of happiness, as well as on the happiness of duty.

Better | Character | Duty | World | Happiness |

Eda J. LeShan

We are not asking our children to do their own best but to be the best. Education is in danger of becoming a religion based on fear; its doctrine is to compete. The majority of our children are being led to believe that they are doomed to failure in a world which has room only for those at the top.

Character | Children | Danger | Doctrine | Education | Failure | Fear | Majority | Religion | World | Danger | Failure |

Walter Savage Landor

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne.

Character | Public | Punishment |

Yeruchem Levovitz, aka The Mashgiach

When a person is born, he finds the world in a certain organized fashion. As he grows up, he tries to adjust himself to the assumptions that are accepted in the world. He views each event that occurs with the same perspective as the other people of his generation. These perspectives originated in the past and have been handed down from parents to children. These assumptions are taken for granted to such an extent that most people react to the accepted perspective of the world as if they were laws of the universe that cannot be changed. They are accepted as reality and are not challenged. Only a small minority of people obtain the necessary wisdom to look at the world with complete objectivity. They take a critical look at teach and every thing and try to understand everything as it really is instead of accepting the general prevalent outlook. Those who try to investigate the origin of every perspective will perceive everything in a much different light than is commonly accepted.

Character | Children | Light | Objectivity | Parents | Past | People | Reality | Teach | Universe | Will | Wisdom | World | Understand |