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

Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy

The self is the metaphoric construct of identity and agency, the hypothetical piece of turf on which we construct our strategies for survival, the notion around which we focus our instincts for self-preservation, our needs for self-approval, and the boundaries of our self-interest.

Character | Focus | Self | Self-approval | Self-interest | Self-preservation | Survival |

Georgii Litichevsky Semenovich

Life means love. We are here for love. Only love is real and everything is real thanks to love. We are nomads wandering through illusionary space. How to make it real? Only by destroying limits that separate us from others. No violence, no attempts at escape can help, only love. Too often love is more painful than joyful. The instances of love are much shorter than the periods during which we wait for love to emerge. The meaning of living is mastering the art of waiting.

Art | Character | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Means | Space | Waiting | Art |

Christian D. Larson

Every desire for power, ability, wisdom, harmony, life, greatness will impress itself upon the subconscious and will cause the thing desired to be produced in the great within. What is produced in the within will come forth into expression in the personality; therefore, by knowing how to impress the subconscious, man may give his personal self any quality desired, in any quantity desired. What man may desire to become, that he can become, and the art of directing and impressing the subconscious is the secret. The perpetual awakening of the great within will produce a greatness, because to the powers and the possibilities of the great within there is no limit, neither is there any end.

Ability | Art | Awakening | Cause | Character | Desire | Greatness | Harmony | Knowing | Life | Life | Man | Personality | Power | Self | Will | Wisdom | Art |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

The policy of adapting one’s self to circumstances makes all ways smooth.

Character | Circumstances | Policy | Self |

Walter Lippmann

Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.

Character | Conservatism | Effort | Men | Success |

Joshua L. Liebman, fully Joshua Loth Liebman

Tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another's beliefs, practices and habits without necessarily sharing or accepting them.

Character | Effort | Understand |

Maier NULL

I consider the subordination of reason to the authority of any person to be idolatry.

Authority | Character | Reason | Wisdom |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

From obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does form self-opinion.

Character | Obedience | Opinion | Self | Sin | Submission |

Maurice Nicoll

Is it not only through the recognition of scale (faith) in ourselves that we can escape from the negation of life?

Character | Faith | Life | Life |

Joaquin Miller, formally Cincinnatus Heine (or Hiner) Miller

That man who lives for self alone lives for the meanest mortal known.

Character | Man | Mortal | Self |

Henry Spencer Moore

Virtue is to her self the best reward.

Character | Reward | Self | Virtue | Virtue |

Maurice Nicoll

Only when we realise that we have no self can we seek ourselves. Only through a flash of truth can one understand ignorance.

Character | Ignorance | Self | Truth | Understand |

Nachman of Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Bratslav, Nachman from Uman NULL

We cannot think two thoughts at the same time. Consequently, when negative thoughts arise, you do not need to fight them. Make an effort to think positive thoughts, and the negative thoughts will disappear.

Character | Effort | Need | Time | Will | Think |

Maurice Nicoll

Death is a fact in our natural reality - that is, in our sense-given experience of life - and as long as we cannot understand that we apprehend though the senses only a minute part of total existence and reality, we cannot escape from the violent effect of its suggestion.

Character | Death | Existence | Experience | Life | Life | Reality | Sense | Understand |

Alden C. Palmer

If one lives with Nature a little while, he soon recognizes the harmony of creation... Each of us is, therefore, an instrument of God. When one thinks of his humble self in this light, life takes on a more profound meaning.

Character | God | Harmony | Life | Life | Light | Little | Meaning | Nature | Self |

Robert M. Pirsig

So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.

Character | Mind | Peace | Reflection | Right | Self | Serenity | Will | Work |

Nikita Ivanovich Panin

To be forbearing to all - that is love; to be relentless toward self - that is wisdom; to be content with what one has - that is riches; to be discontented with what one is - that is piety.

Character | Love | Piety | Riches | Self | Wisdom |

Gretta Palmer

Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.

Character | Effort | Happy | Wisdom |

Tatjana Patitz

I believe that being true to the self is the most important thing in life - to have a free heart, a pure soul and a pure mind. We all live, or should live, for the fulfillment of the self. We are all mirror images of each other; whatever we feel in ourselves we feel in others. I believe that we create our own lives... Intuition should play the main role in everything we do. Through the creative source of the mind and the unlimited power of the spirit all our deepest wishes come true. For me the meaning is that we are all one, and the only true reality is the spirit. Believing in the power of spirit is simply to have a passion for life, to learn, to grow, to evolve and most of all to love, and live each day and each moment of the day to the fullest.

Character | Day | Fulfillment | Heart | Important | Intuition | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mind | Passion | Play | Power | Reality | Self | Soul | Spirit | Wishes |