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

Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

Love is the energizing elixir of the universe, the cause and effect of all harmonies

Birth | Body | Giving | Love | Pain | Will |

Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

The lowness of grasses. Never brag of being strong. The axe doesn't worry how thick the branches are. It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves. It leaves the leaves alone.

Advice | Giving | Love | Man | Trouble |

Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

In silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and watch how the pattern improves. You suppose you are the trouble but you are the cure. You suppose that you are the lock on the door but you are the key that opens it. It's too bad that you want to be someone else. You don't see your own face, your own beauty. Yet, no face is more beautiful than yours. Only from the heart can you touch the sky. People of the world don't look at themselves, and so they blame one another. Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Giving | Nothing | Reason |

Russian Proverbs

One does not sharpen the axes after the right time; after the time they are needed. (It is useless to have something when there is no use for it)

Giving | Regret |

Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes

Coming in, I was denounced as a fraud by all the extreme men of the opposing party, and as an ingrate and a traitor by the same class of men in my own party. Going out, I have the good will, blessings, and approval of the best people of all parties and sections.

Confidence | Contrast | Fame | Giving | Greatness | History | Honesty | Logic | Modesty | Position | Sound | Success | Think |

S. Truett Cathy

No goal is too high if we climb with care and confidence.

Day | Giving | Joy | Opportunity |

Saint Catherine of Siena NULL

I shall give thee such speech and wisdom that no one shall be able to resist. I shall bring thee before Pontiffs and the rulers of the Church.

Giving |

Saint Catherine of Siena NULL

O loving, tender Word of God, You tell me: 'I have marked the path and opened the gate with My Blood; do not be negligent in following it, but take the same road which I, eternal Truth, have traced out with My Blood.' Arise, my soul, and follow your Redeemer, for no one can go to the Father but by Him. O sweet Christ, Christ-Love, You are the way, and the door through which we must enter in order to reach the Father.

Charity | Enough | Excess | Giving | God | Grace | Love | Man | God |

Saint Catherine of Siena NULL

You are asking for something that would be harmful to your salvation if you had it — so by not getting what you've asked, you really are getting what you want.

Giving |

Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

God ... help us, to strive even harder to understand than be understood.

Giving |

Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

Love has cast me into a furnace, love has cast me into a furnace, I am cast into a furnace of love. My new Bridegroom, the loving Lamb, gave me the nuptial ring; then having cast me into prison, He cleft my heart, and my body fell to the ground. Those arrows, propelled by love, struck me and set me on fire. From peace He made war, and I am dying of sweetness. The darts rained so thick and fast, that I was all in agony. Then I took a buckler, but the shafts were so swift that it shielded me no more; they mangled my whole body, so strong was the arm that shot them. He shot them so powerfully, that I despaired of parrying them; and to escape death, I cried with all my might: 'Thou transgressest the laws of the camp.' But he only set up a new instrument of war, which overwhelmed me with fresh blows. So true was His aim, that He never missed. I was lying on the ground, unable to move my limbs. My whole body was broken, and I had no more sense than a man deceased; Deceased, not by a true death, but through excess of joy. Then regaining possession of my body, I felt so strong, that I could follow the guides who led me to the court of heaven.

Darkness | Despair | Doubt | Eternal | Giving | Sadness |

Saint Catherine of Siena NULL

You know that to join two things together there must be nothing between them or there cannot be a perfect fusion. Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be, without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between, just as God loves us without anything in between.

Beauty | Eternal | Faith | Giving | Good | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mortal | Obedience | Wisdom | Beauty |

Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

Oh, how glorious it is, how holy and great, to have a Father in heaven!

Eternal | Giving |

Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

The conflict between the flesh and the Spirit, because of the sinfulness of man, revolves around his [man’s] nature.

Church | Giving | Heart | Joy | Lord | Peace | Salvation | World |

Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

Disguise | Fury | Giving | Lord | Mind | Spirit |

Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

The soul is the captain and ruler of the life of morals.

Giving |

Saint Vincent de Paul

Restlessness usually stems from pride and from being discontented with one's lot in life.

Action | Giving | Merit | Obedience |

Sam Levenson

The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.

Birth | Giving | Woman |

Sam Keen

Chronological time is what we measure by clocks and calendars; it is always linear, orderly, quantifiable, and mechanical. Kairotic time is organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and aperiodic; it is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change the direction of his life.

Beginning | Birth | Day | Giving | Men | Present | Sense | Time | Will |

Samuel Butler

If, then, reason would be non-existent were there no such thing as unreason, surely it follows that the more unreason there is, the more reason there must be also? Hence the necessity for the development of unreason, even in the interests of reason herself. The Professors of Unreason deny that they undervalue reason: none can be more convinced than they are, that if the double currency cannot be rigorously deduced as a necessary consequence of human reason, the double currency should cease forthwith; but they say that it must be deduced from no narrow and exclusive view of reason which should deprive that admirable faculty of the one-half of its own existence. Unreason is a part of reason; it must therefore be allowed its full share in stating the initial conditions.

Giving | Men | Will |