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

H. F. Rall, fully Harris Franklin

Freedom means mastery of your world. Fear and greed are common sources of bondage. We are afraid, beset by anxiety. We do not know what tomorrow will bring. We seem so helpless over against the forces that move now without apparent thought for men. And our inner freedom is destroyed by greed. We think that if we only had enough goods we should be free, happy, without care. And so there comes the lust for money, and slavery to the world of things. The world can enslave; it can never make us free.

Anxiety | Anxiety | Care | Character | Enough | Fear | Freedom | Greed | Happy | Lust | Means | Men | Money | Slavery | Thought | Tomorrow | Will | World | Think | Thought |

Thomas Reid

If there be anything that can be called genius, it consists chiefly in ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind, till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides.

Ability | Attention | Character | Genius | Mind |

Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

The principal reason for sex deification is loss of belief in God. Once men lose God, they lose the purpose of life; and when the purpose of living is forgotten, the universe becomes meaningless. Man then tries to forget his emptiness in the intensity of a momentary experience.

Belief | Character | Experience | God | Life | Life | Man | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Universe | Loss |

Charles Simmons

Recreation is not being idle; it is easing the wearied part by change of occupation. To re-create strength, rest. To re-create mind, repose. To re-create cheerfulness, hope in God, or change the object of attention to one more elevated and worthy of thought.

Attention | Change | Character | Cheerfulness | God | Hope | Mind | Object | Occupation | Recreation | Repose | Rest | Strength | Thought |

Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

The purpose of food is to relieve hunger and thirst, not to minister to caprice and luxury.

Character | Hunger | Luxury | Purpose | Purpose |

William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell

It is wonderful what strength of purpose and boldness and energy of will are roused by the assurance that we are doing our duty.

Boldness | Character | Duty | Energy | Purpose | Purpose | Strength | Will |

Abba Hillel Silver

When is a man free? Now when he is driftwood on the stream of life... free of all cares or worries or ambitions... He is not free at all... To be free in action, in struggle, in undiverted and purposeful achievement, to move forward towards a worthy objective across a fierce terrain of resistance, to be vital and allow in the exercise of a great enterprise - that is to be free, and to know the joy and exhilaration of true freedom. A man is free only when he has an errand on earth.

Achievement | Action | Character | Earth | Freedom | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Struggle |

Samuel Smiles

He who recognizes no higher logic than that of the shilling may become a very rich man, and yet remain a very poor creature, for riches are no proof of moral worth, and their glitter often serves only to draw attention to the worthlessness of their possessor, as the glowworm's light reveals the grub.

Attention | Character | Light | Logic | Man | Riches | Worth | Riches |

Jeremiah Seed

Be not ashamed to confess that you have been in the wrong. It is but owning what you need not be ashamed of - that you now have more sense than you had before, to see your error; more humility to acknowledge it, more grace to correct it.

Character | Error | Grace | Humility | Need | Sense | Wrong |

Judy Tatelbaum

Grief is a wound that needs attention in order to heal. To work through and complete grief means to face our feelings openly and honestly, to express and release our feelings fully and to tolerate and accept our feeling for however long it takes for the wound to heal. We fear that once acknowledged grief will bowl us over. The truth is that grief experienced does dissolve. Grief unexpressed is grief that lasts indefinitely.

Attention | Character | Fear | Feelings | Grief | Means | Order | Truth | Will | Work |

Thomas Tickell

Vain man would trace the mystic maze with foolish wisdom, arguing, charge his God, his balance hold, and guide his angry rod, new-mould the spheres, and mend the skies’ design, and sound th’ immense with his short scanty line. Do thou, my soul, the destined period wait, when God shall solve the dark decrees of fate, His now unequal dispensation clear, and make all wise and beautiful appear.

Balance | Character | Design | Fate | God | Man | Soul | Sound | Wisdom | Wise | God |