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

Edward Howard Griggs

Thus everyone needs a vocation — rich or poor, cultivated or ignorant, man or woman, in the home or out of it—each of us must find a vocation and fulfil loyally our work in it, to achieve and keep the sane, affirmative wisdom that is the basis of all noble living.

Man | Wisdom | Work |

Edward Paul Abbey

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

Fighting | Men | Tragedy | War |

Ezra Taft Benson

It is a fundamental truth that the responsibilities of motherhood cannot be successfully delegated. No, not to day-care centers, not to schools, not to nurseries, not to babysitters. We become enamored with men’s theories such as the idea of preschool training outside the home for young children. Not only does this put added pressure on the budget, but it places young children in an environment away from mother’s influence. Too often the pressure for popularity, on children and teens, places an economic burden on the income of the father, so mother feels she must go to work to satisfy her children’s needs. That decision can be most shortsighted. It is mother’s influence during the crucial formative years that forms a child’s basic character. Home is the place where a child learns faith, feels love, and thereby learns from mother’s loving example to choose righteousness. How vital are mother’s influence and teaching in the home—and how apparent when neglected!

Children | Decision | Example | Influence | Mother | Theories | Training | Truth | Work | Child |

Freeman John Dyson

The success of Apollo was mainly due to the fact that the project was conceived and honestly presented to the public as an international sporting event and not as a contribution to science. The order of priorities in Apollo was accurately reflected by the first item to be unloaded after each landing on the Moon's surface, the television camera. The landing, the coming and going of the astronauts, the exploring of the moon's surface, the gathering of Moon rocks and the earthward departure, all were expertly choreographed with the cameras placed in the right positions to make a dramatic show on television. This was to me the great surprise of the Apollo missions. There was nothing surprising in the fact that astronauts could walk on the Moon and bring home Moon rocks. There were no big scientific surprises in the chemistry of the Moon rocks or in the results of magnetic and seismic observations that the astronauts carried out. The big surprise was the quality of the public entertainment that the missions provided. I had never expected that we would see in real time astronauts hopping around in lunar gravity and driving their Rover down the Lincoln- Lee scarp to claim a lunar speed record of eleven miles per hour. Intensive television coverage was the driving force of Apollo. Von Braun had not imagined the possibilities of television when he decided that one kilohertz would be an adequate communication bandwidth for his Mars Project.

Entertainment | Force | Nothing | Order | Public | Right | Success | Television | Time |

Francis Beaumont

It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it.

Argument | Silence |

Frances Wright, known as Fanny Wright

Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.

Liberty |

Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn

The world ... is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are. And they will come again until the atonement [at-one-ment] is accepted.

Purpose | Purpose | Question | Will | World |

J. R. Miller, fully James Russell Miller

A true home is one of the most sacred of places. It is a sanctuary into which men flee from the world’s perils and alarms. It is a resting-place to which at close of day the weary retire to gather new strength for the battle and toils of tomorrow. It is the place where love learns its lessons, where life is schooled into discipline and strength, where character is molded.

Battle | Character | Day | Discipline | Life | Life | Love | Men | Sacred | Strength |

Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation. For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy.

Harm | Heart | Mercy | Prayer | Receive | Sorrow | Tears |

Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy

Having gained distance and sophistication of perception, we can turn and recognize who we have been all along. Now it can dawn on us: we are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again -- and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful way than before, in our infancy.

Dawn | Knowing | World |

Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy

It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up -- release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature. For some of us, our love of the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened.

Ego | Experience | Love | Play | World |

Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy

Because the relationship between self and world is reciprocal, it is not a matter of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the Earth, the Earth heals us. No need to wait. As we care enough to take risks, we loosen the grip of ego and begin to come home to our true nature. For in the co-arising nature of things, the world itself, if we are bold enough to love it, acts through us. It does not ask us to be pure or perfect, or wait until we are detached from all passions, but only to care to harness the sweet, pure intention of our deepest passions...

Care | Earth | Ego | Enough | Intention | Love | Nature | Need | Relationship | Self | Work | World |

John Locke

If any man err from the right way, it is his own misfortune, no injury to thee; nor therefore art thou to punish him in the things of this life because thou supposest he will be miserable in that which is to come.

Art | Life | Life | Man | Right | Will | Art |

John C. Maxwell

The 21 Indispensible Qualities of a Leader CHARACTER: Be a Piece of the Rock CHARISMA: The First Impression Can Seal the Deal. COMMITMENT: It Separates Doers from Dreamers. COMMUNICATION: Without It You Travel Alone. COMPETENCE: If You Build It, They Will Come. COURAGE: One Person with Courage Is a Majority. DISCERNMENT: Put an End to Unsolved Mysteries. FOCUS: The Sharper It Is, the Sharper You Are. GENEROSITY: Your Candle Loses Nothing When It Lights Another. INITIATIVE: You Won’t Leave Home Without It. LISTENING: To Connect with Their Hearts, Use Your Ears. PASSION: Take This Life and Love It. POSITIVE ATTITUDE: If You Believe You Can, You Can. PROBLEM SOLVING: You Can’t Let Your Problems Be a Problem. RELATIONSHIPS: If You Get Along, They’ll Go Along. RESPONSIBILITY: If You Won’t Carry the Ball, You Can’t Lead the Team. SECURITY: Competence Never Compensates for Insecurity. SELF-DISCIPLINE: The First Person You Lead Is You. SERVANTHOOD: To Get Ahead, Put Others First. TEACHABILITY: To Keep Leading, Keep Learning. VISION: You Can Seize Only What You Can.

Competence | Courage | Impression | Life | Life | Love | Nothing | Problems | Qualities | Will |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

We have lost sensitivity to truth and purity of heart in the wasteland of opportunism… Continuity, permanence, intimacy, authenticity, earnestness are its attributes. For the soul, home is where the prayer is.

Earnestness | Heart | Prayer | Purity | Truth |

Joseph Addison

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Criticism | Defense |

Joseph Gerrald

True religion, like all free governments, appeals to the understanding for its support, and not to the sword. All systems, whether civil or moral, can only be durable in proportion as they are founded on truth and calculated to promote the good of mankind. This will account to us why governments suited to the great energies of man have always outlived the perishable things which despotism has erected. Yes, this will account to us why the stream of Time, which is continually washing away the dissoluble fabrics of superstitions and impostures, passes without injury by the adamant of Christianity.

Good | Man | Truth | Understanding | Will |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

The sweetest type of heaven is home - nay, heaven is the home for whose acquisition we are to strive the most strongly. Home, in one form and another, is the great object of life. It stands at the end of every day’s labor, and beckons us to its bosom; and life would be cheerless and meaningless, did we not discern across the river that divides us from the life beyond, glimpses of the pleasant mansion prepared for us.

Heaven | Life | Life | Object |

Joseph Brodsky

No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there-well or poorly.

Circumstances |

Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland

No nation can be destroyed while it possesses a good home life.

Good |