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

William James

The part of wisdom as well as of courage is to believe what is in the line of your needs, for only by such belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save yourself.

Belief | Courage | Need | Right | Wisdom |

Thomas Jefferson

If thinking men would have the courage to think for themselves, and to speak what they think, it would be found they do not differ in religious opinion as much as is opposed.

Courage | Men | Opinion | Thinking | Think |

P. A. R. Janet and G. Sèailles

The law of duty demands moral perfection or holiness. But this is impossible in our present life, therefore it can only be attained by an indefinite progress, and this progress is only possible under the hypothesis of an existence and a personality that re indefinitely prolonged.

Duty | Existence | Hypothesis | Law | Life | Life | Perfection | Personality | Present | Progress |

Victor Hugo

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; when you have laboriously accomplished your daily tasks, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

Courage | God | Life | Life | Patience | Peace | God |

Jinabhadra NULL

You should know that the chief characteristic of the soul is awareness, and that it existence can be proved by all valid means of proof. Souls may be classified as transmigrant and liberated, or as embodied in immobile and mobile beings.

Awareness | Existence | Means | Soul |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

We live in an age of self-dissipation, of depersonalization. Should we adjust our vision of existence to make our paucity, make a virtue of obtuseness, glorify evasion?

Age | Evasion | Existence | Self | Virtue | Virtue | Vision |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

We live not only in time and space but also in the knowledge of God. The events in the world reflect in him, and all existence is coexistence with God. Time and space are not the limits of the world. Our life occurs here and in the knowledge of God.

Events | Existence | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Space | Time | World |

Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley

The future must have as its basis the consciousness of sanctity in existence – in common things, in the events of human life, in the gradually comprehended interlocking whole revealed to the human desire for knowledge, n the benedictions of beauty and love, in the catharsis, the sacred purging, of the moral drama in which character is pitted against fate and even deepest tragedy may uplift the mind.

Beauty | Character | Consciousness | Desire | Events | Existence | Fate | Future | Knowledge | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Sacred | Tragedy | Fate | Beauty |

Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward

It takes courage to experience the freedom that comes with autonomy, courage to accept intimacy and directly encounter other persons, courage to take a stand in an unpopular cause, courage to choose authenticity over approval and to choose it again and again, courage to accept the responsibility for your own choices, and, indeed, courage to be the unique person you really are.

Authenticity | Cause | Courage | Experience | Freedom | Responsibility | Unique | Approval |

William James

If things are ever to move upward, someone must be ready to take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try nonresistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed. When they do succeed, they are far more powerfully successful than force or worldly prudence. Force destroys enemies; and the best that can be said of prudence is that it keeps what we already have in safety. But nonresistance, when successful, turns enemies into friends; and charity regenerates its objects.

Charity | Force | Prudence | Prudence | Risk | Will |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

[A majority of people] are not theoretical atheists; they are practical atheists. They do not deny the existence of God with their lips, but they are continually denying his existence with their lives.

Existence | God | Majority | People | Theoretical | God |

Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso NULL

The source of peace is within us; so also the source of war. And the real enemy is within us, and not outside. The source of war is not the existence of nuclear weapons or other arms. It is the minds of human beings who decide to push the button and to use those arms out of hatred, anger or greed.

Anger | Enemy | Existence | Greed | Peace | War | Weapons |

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

The artist justifies his existence only when he can transform his imagination into truth.

Existence | Imagination | Truth |

Jack Klugman

Hope awakens courage. He who can implant courage in the human soul is the best physician.

Courage | Hope | Soul |

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

The artist's imagination may wander far from nature. But as long as it is a living, moving power in his brain, isn't it just as real as any other natural phenomenon? The artist justifies his existence only when he can transform his imagination into truth.

Existence | Imagination | Nature | Power |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

As far we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Darkness | Existence | Light | Purpose | Purpose |

Bibhuti Mazumder

Love is the creative power of the universe that manifests as strength and beauty. To love is to know God and the inmost nature of the ultimate Reality… Love is letting go of fear and worry… Love consecrates life… By letting go of separateness we see love as the reflection of our own self and harmony in the inconsistencies and imperfections of the existence and explore joy in the midst of the pains and problems of life.

Beauty | Existence | Fear | God | Harmony | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Power | Problems | Reality | Reflection | Self | Strength | Universe | Worry | God |

John Locke

Fortitude is the Guard and Support of the other Virtues; and without Courage a Man will scarce keep steady to his Duty, and fill up the Character of a truly worthy Man.

Character | Courage | Duty | Fortitude | Man | Will |

Joseph Mazzini, aka Giuseppe Mazzini

Life is a mission. Every other definition of life is false, and leads all who accept it astray. Religion, science, philosophy, though still at variance upon many points, all agree in this, that every existence is an aim.

Existence | Life | Life | Mission | Philosophy | Religion | Science |