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

Paul Tyner

For this cause he came into the world; that he might be a witness to the truth; a living, unimpeachable witness of the truth that shall make us free - the truth of man’s religion (reunion) with God, through absolute spiritual self consciousness - with God - with the Eternal, Omnipotent and Omniscient Source and Fountain of Life, “in whom we live and move and have our being,” without whom we are not!

Absolute | Cause | Character | Consciousness | Eternal | God | Life | Life | Man | Religion | Self | Truth | Witness | World | God |

William Whewell

Every man has obligation which belong to his station. Duties extend beyond obligations, and direct the affections, desires, and intentions, as well as the actions.

Character | Man | Obligation |

Hugh Walpole, fully Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole

I believe the root of all happiness on this earth to life in the realization of a spiritual life with a consciousness of something wider than materialism; in the capacity to live in a world that makes you unselfish because you are not over anxious about your personal place; that makes you tolerant because you realize your own comic fallibility; that gives you tranquillity without complacency because you believe in something so much larger than yourself.

Capacity | Character | Complacency | Consciousness | Earth | Life | Life | Materialism | Tranquility | World | Happiness |

Daniel Webster

There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from but the consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever.

Character | Consciousness | Duty | Evil | Sense |

Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones

Life itself is the expression of evolution... Everything that exists is merely matter in motion. In the same way, perfection is always a temporary relative motion. Humanity is relative... We are at such a low expression of consciousness that we have not yet seriously studied ourselves... Development is circular... Everything is constantly moving at higher, faster, more refined, complex levels of being... We will be here as quantitative motion until we reach a state of motion that is qualitative, revolutionary. Then we will be somewhere else!

Consciousness | Evolution | Humanity | Life | Life | Perfection | Will | Wisdom |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave... which rises, and which is opposed by the descending movement of matter.. this rising wave is consciousness... running through human generations, subdividing itself into individuals. This subdivision was vaguely indicated in it, but could not have been made clear without matter. Thus souls are continually being created, which, nevertheless, in a certain sense pre-existed. They are nothing else than the little rills into which the great river of life divides itself, flowing through the body of humanity. The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course. Consciousness is distinct from the organism it animates, although it must undergo its vicissitudes... the brain underlines at ever instant the motor indications of the state of consciousness; but the interdependence of consciousness and brain is limited to this... consciousness is essentially free.

Body | Consciousness | Humanity | Life | Life | Little | Nothing | Sense | Wisdom |

Bruno Bettelheim

Reading and what it can contribute to one's life is not something that pertains only to the ego and its conscious mind; it is also deeply rooted in the unconsciousness. Those who retain all through life a deep commitment to the literary harbor in their consciousness some residue of their earlier conviction that reading is an art permitting access to magic worlds, although very few of them are aware that they subconsciously believe this to be so.

Art | Commitment | Consciousness | Ego | Life | Life | Magic | Mind | Reading | Unconsciousness | Wisdom | Art |

Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch

Whatever task you undertake, do it with all your heart and soul. Always be courteous, never be discouraged. Beware of him who promises something for nothing. Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures. Do not look for approval except the consciousness of doing your best.

Blame | Consciousness | Heart | Nothing | Soul | Wisdom | Approval |

Albert Barnes

It is not the profession of religion which creates the obligation for the performance of duty; for that existed before any such profession was made. The profession of religion only recognizes the obligation.

Duty | Obligation | Religion | Wisdom |

Horace Bushnell

The moment you can make a very simple discovery, viz., that obligation to God is your privilege, and is not imposed as a burden, your experience will teach you many things - that duty is liberty, that repentance is a release from sorrow, that sacrifice is gain, that humility is dignity, that the truth from that which you hide is a healing element that bathes your disordered life, and that even the penalties and terrors of God are the artillery only to protection to His realm.

Dignity | Discovery | Duty | Experience | God | Humility | Liberty | Life | Life | Obligation | Repentance | Sacrifice | Sorrow | Teach | Truth | Will | Wisdom | God |

Horace Bushnell

Measure obligation by inherent ability!

Ability | Obligation | Wisdom |

Bernard d'Espagnat

The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and the facts established by experiment.

Consciousness | Doctrine | Existence | Experiment | Wisdom | World |

John Dewey

I believe that... education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living... all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race... Every thinker puts one portion of an apparently stable world in peril.

Consciousness | Education | Future | Individual | Peril | Race | Wisdom | World |

Albert Einstein

The special theory of relativity... creates a formal dependence between the way in which the spatial co-ordinates on the one hand, and the temporal co-ordinates, on the other, have to enter into the natural laws.

Dependence | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all men are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all men, shall we be able to speak of mankind as civilized.

Life | Life | Mankind | Men | Obligation | Wisdom |