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

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

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

Character | Darkness | Existence | Light | Purpose | Purpose |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

To know and to serve God, of course, is why we’re here, a clear truth that like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard... Even in time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. If we had no other purpose in life, it would be good enough to simply take care of them and goose them once in a while.

Care | Character | Enough | Focus | God | Good | Greed | Life | Life | People | Purpose | Purpose | Time | Truth |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

Your success and happiness lie in you. External conditions are the accidents of life. The great enduring realities are love and service. Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow. Resolve to keep happy and your joy in you shall form an invincible host against difficulty.

Character | Difficulty | Happy | Intelligence | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Purpose | Purpose | Service | Success | Happiness |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

Our unconscious existence is the real one and our conscious world a kind of illusion, an apparent reality constructed for a specific purpose like a dream which seems a reality as long as we are in it.

Character | Existence | Illusion | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | World |

John Locke

Anger is uneasiness or discomposure of the mind upon the receipt of any injury, with a present purpose of revenge.

Anger | Character | Mind | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Revenge |

Stephen MacKenna

To have no set purpose in one's life is the harlotry of the will.

Character | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Wisdom |

Yosef Zev Leipowitz

We usually view praying due to suffering that the suffering comes because of external situations and hence we have to pray. But this is not correct. The purpose of the suffering was that we should pray. By pouring our hearts to the Almighty, we become closer to Him and the suffering is a tool for our elevation.

Character | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering |

Theodore T. Munger

There is no road to success but through a clear strong purpose. Nothing can take its place. A purpose underlies character, culture, position, attainment of every sort.

Attainment | Character | Culture | Nothing | Position | Purpose | Purpose | Success |

Robert J. McCracken, D.D.

Get to know two things about a man - how he earns his money and how he spends it - and you have a clue to his character, for you have a searchlight that shows up the inmost recesses of his soul. You know all you need to know about his standards, his motives, his driving desires, his real religion.

Character | Man | Money | Motives | Need | Religion | Soul |

David O. McKay

Find a purpose in life so big it will challenge every capacity to be at your best.

Capacity | Challenge | Character | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Will |

David O. McKay

The true purpose of life, aside from resisting oppression from without, each individual carries within himself, the responsibility of living nobly or ignobly.

Character | Individual | Life | Life | Oppression | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility |

Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows.

Character | Heart | Injustice | Injustice | Integrity | Patience | Purpose | Purpose |

Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

If you lend a person any money, it becomes lost for any purpose as one’s own. When you ask for it back again, you may find a friend made an enemy by your kindness. If you begin to press still further, either you must part with that which you have intrusted, or else you must lose that friend.

Character | Enemy | Friend | Kindness | Money | Purpose | Purpose |

Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, born Frederick Lawrence

If I were asked to sum up in a single phrase the main purpose of individual life I would express it as the enlargement of personality. Unless an individual can transcend the limits of class, sex, race, age and creed, his personality remains of necessity to that extent incomplete.

Age | Character | Creed | Individual | Life | Life | Necessity | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Wisdom |

Ross Parmenter

The need for devotion to something outside ourselves is even more profound than the need for companionship. If we are not to go to pieces or wither away, we all must have some purpose in life; for no man can live for himself alone.

Character | Devotion | Life | Life | Man | Need | Purpose | Purpose |

Norzi NULL

The purpose of serving God... is to promote man's perfection.

Character | God | Man | Perfection | Purpose | Purpose |