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

William James

‘The true’, to put it very briefly, is only expedient in the way of our thinking, just as ‘the right’ is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. Expedient in almost any fashion; and expedient in the long run and on the whole of course; for what meets expediently all the experience in sight won’t necessarily meet all farther experiences equally satisfactorily.

Experience | Right | Thinking | Wisdom |

William James

The same space of time seems shorter as we grow older - that is, the days, the months, and the years do so; whether the hours do so is doubtful, and the minutes and seconds to all appearance remain about the same... In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollection of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly notice at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.

Appearance | Day | Experience | Space | Time | Wisdom | Youth | Youth |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

[Paraphrase] The function of religion is to protect us from an experience of God.

Experience | God | Religion | Wisdom |

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.

Experience | Understanding | Unique | Wisdom |

Ludwig Lewisohn

Wherever deep experience attains intense expression, there is art.

Art | Experience | Wisdom |

D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence

What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another... Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom... The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences... the world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeonhole any idea. It can't pigeon-hole a new experience.

Experience | Fear | Freedom | Genius | Laughter | Man | Men | Wisdom | World | Old |

Nikolai Lenin, aka Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir llyich Ulyanov

Even if for every hundred correct things we did we committed ten thousand mistakes, our revolution would still be - and it will be in the judgment of history - great and invincible; for this is the first time that not a minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but the real masses, the overwhelming majority of the working people are themselves building a new life and are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of socialist organization.

Experience | History | Judgment | Life | Life | Majority | Organization | People | Problems | Revolution | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Ludwig Lewisohn

The artist is one to whom all experience is revelation.

Experience | Revelation | Wisdom |

George Henry Lewes

Not only the individual experience slowly acquired, but the accumulated experience of the race, organized in language, condensed in instruments and axioms, and in what may be called the inherited intuitions - these form the multiple unity which is expressed in the abstract term “experience.”

Abstract | Axioms | Experience | Individual | Language | Race | Unity | Wisdom |

John Lilly, fully John Cunningham Lilly``

In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true, or becomes true within certain limits to be learned by experience and experiment. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind. There are no limits.

Experience | Mind | Wisdom |

Oscar Edward Maurer

Waste not your strength trying to push shut doors which God is opening. Neither wear yourself out in keeping open doors which ought to be forever sealed. Some episode in your life, over which you are anxious, is closed. it is in the past. Whatever its memory, you cannot change it. But you can shut the door. Go into some silent place of thought. Test your self-respect. Ask your soul, "Have I emerged from this experience with honor, or if not, can honor be retrieved?" And if your soul answers, "Yes," close then the door to that Past; hang a garland over the portal if you will, but come away without tarrying. The east is aflame with the radiance of the morning, and before you stands many another door, held open by the hand of God.

Change | Experience | God | Honor | Life | Life | Memory | Past | Respect | Self | Soul | Strength | Thought | Waste | Will | Wisdom | God |

Walter Lippmann

Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.

Art | Experience | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Wynton Marsalis

On one level, life is the process of seeking out and enjoying experiences - from the transcendent to the tragic. Life has as cyclical pattern of movement and appreciation; even when you’re not doing anything, you’re probably in a situation you sought. On another level, life is the experience of the self’s interaction with the world. The self can be broken down into three main elements and their corresponding activities: first, the heart (knowing compassion, receiving and giving love); second, the intellect (acquiring and digesting information); third, the senses (acting and being acted upon). It is the soul, however, that focuses and inspires all three the soul gives us resilience -an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship... The meaning of life can’t be understood without first looking at the self and its interaction with the world. In effect, this amounts to examining the inner workings of the soul of the universe.

Appreciation | Compassion | Experience | Giving | Heart | Knowing | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Resilience | Self | Soul | Universe | Wisdom | World | Intellect |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

He who thinks much and to some purpose easily forgets his own experiences but not the thoughts each experience provoked.

Experience | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |

Joy Elmer Morgan

Wisdom comes not from experience but from meditating on experience and assimilating it.

Experience | Wisdom |

Melvin L. Morse

I feel that just understanding near-death experiences will be our first step at healing the great division between science and religion that started with Isaac Newton almost three hundred years ago. Educating physicians, nurses, and ourselves about what people experience in those final hours will shatter our prejudices about the ways we think about medicine and life.

Death | Experience | Life | Life | People | Religion | Science | Understanding | Will | Wisdom | Think |

Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

Constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go... To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

Abuse | Authority | Experience | Man | Nature | Power | Will | Wisdom |

Theodore T. Munger

The experience of life nearly always works toward the confirmation of faith. It is the total significance of life that it reveals God to man; and life only can do this; neither thought, nor demonstration, nor miracle, but only life, weaving its threads of daily toil and trial and joy into a pattern on which, at last, is inscribed the name of "God."

Experience | Faith | God | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Thought | Wisdom | Trial | God |

Michael Murphy

[There are] four destructive effects of religious and therapeutic disciplines: 1) A practice can reinforce limiting traits, preventing their removal or transformation. 2) A practice can support limiting beliefs, giving them greater power in the life of an individual or culture. 3) A practice can subvert balanced growth by emphasizing some virtues at the expense of others. 4) A practice can limit integral development when it focuses on partial though authentic experience of superordinary reality.

Culture | Experience | Giving | Growth | Individual | Life | Life | Power | Practice | Reality | Wisdom |