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 |

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 |

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 |

Harry Emerson Fosdick

No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it, by vigorously willing to have it. Peace is a margin of power around our daily need. Peace is a consciousness of springs too deep for earthly droughts to dry up. Peace is an awareness of reserves from beyond ourselves, so that our power is not so much in us as through us.

Awareness | Consciousness | Need | Peace | Power | Wisdom | Awareness |

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege

Thoughts are neither things of the outer world or ideas. A third realm must be recognized. What belongs to this corresponds with ideas, in that it cannot be perceived by the senses, but with things, in that it needs no bearer to the contents of whose consciousness to belong. Thus the thought, for example, which we express in the Pythagorean Theorem is timeless true, true independently of whether anyone takes it to be true. It needs no bearer. It is not true for the first time when it is discovered, but is like a planet which, already before anyone has seen it, has been in interaction with other planets.

Consciousness | Example | Ideas | Thought | Time | Wisdom | World |

Jerry Gillies

The strongest single factor in prosperity consciousness is self-esteem: believing you can do it, believing you deserve it, believing you will get it

Consciousness | Esteem | Prosperity | Self | Self-esteem | Will | Wisdom |

S. G. Goodrich, fully Samuel Griswold Goodrich, pen name Peter Praley

Moral courage is a virtue of higher cast and nobler origin than physical. It springs from a consciousness of virtue, and renders a man, in the pursuit of defense of right, superior to the fear of reproach, opposition, or contempt.

Consciousness | Contempt | Courage | Defense | Fear | Man | Opposition | Right | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the recognized growths of our intellect.

Appearance | Consciousness | Thought | Wisdom | Old |

William James

Scenery seems to wear in one's consciousness better than any other element in life.

Better | Consciousness | Life | Life | Wisdom |

William James

Our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness quite disregarded... They forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.

Consciousness | Reality | Wisdom |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all ego-hood. Out of these all-uniting depths arises the dream, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral... Death is psychologically as important as birth... Shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

Abnormal | Birth | Consciousness | Darkness | Death | Dreams | Ego | Eternal | Important | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

Seldom, or perhaps never, does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crises; there is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Consciousness | Individual | Marriage | Pain | Relationship | Wisdom |