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

Gloria D. Karpinski

In surrender we can both give and receive. Relationships take on a different meaning. We learn to be in someone’s life without being in their dance. A relationship becomes important not because it satisfies personality needs but because it’s the pathway to wholeness.

Character | Important | Life | Life | Meaning | Personality | Receive | Relationship | Surrender | Wholeness | Learn |

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

The great spiritual and political viewpoint of the West is that we are all equal and are all capable of developing into the same end product. Anybody who bothers to examine the facts can easily see we are not all equal. What we really are is not so much equal as unique. None of us is the same as anybody else. In this uniqueness is a profound Spiritual Realization: Life is infinitely creative and requires uniqueness for creativity.

Character | Creativity | Life | Life | Unique |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Our inward values and judgments are based on pleasure, not on any great, tremendous principles, but just on pleasure... The active principle of our life is pleasure.

Character | Life | Life | Pleasure | Principles |

Margo Jones

Everything in life is theatre.

Character | Life | Life |

Murray Kempton, fully James Murray Kempton

A man can look upon his life and accept it as good or evil; it is far, far harder for him to confess that it has been unimportant in the sum of things.

Character | Evil | Good | Life | Life | Man |

Sinclair Lewis, fully Harry Sinclair Lewis

It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.

Character | Error | Life | Life | Need | Religion | Worth |

James Russell Lowell

The only conclusive evidence of a man’s sincerity is that he gives himself for a principle. Words, money, all things else, are comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his daily life and practice, it is plain that the truth whatever it may be, has taken possession of him.

Character | Evidence | Life | Life | Man | Money | Practice | Sincerity | Truth | Words |

Madame de Maintenon, Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon, formerly Madame Scarron

The scars of the body - what are they, compared to the hidden ones of the heart?

Body | Character | Heart |

Wilma Mankiller, fully Wilma Pearl Mankiller

The meaning of life is to live in balance and harmony with every other living thing in creation. We must all strive to understand the interconnectedness of all living things and accept our individual role in the protection and support of other life forms on earth. We must also understand our own insignificance in the totality of things.

Balance | Character | Earth | Harmony | Individual | Insignificance | Life | Life | Meaning | Understand |

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

It is not the truth which a man possesses, or believes he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forth to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man. For it is not by the possession, by the search after truth that he enlarges his power, wherein alone consists his ever-increasing perfection. Possession makes one content, indolent, proud.

Character | Effort | Man | Perfection | Power | Search | Truth | Worth |

Joshua L. Liebman, fully Joshua Loth Liebman

Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension; when he does not torment himself with childish guilt feelings, but avoids tragic adult sins; when he postpones immediate pleasures for the sake of long-term values... Our generation must be inspired to search for that maturity which will manifest itself in the qualities of tenacity, dependability, co-operativeness and the inner drive to work and sacrifice for a nobler future of mankind.

Character | Feelings | Future | Guilt | Life | Life | Mankind | Qualities | Sacrifice | Search | Tenacity | Will | Work |

E. V. Lucas, fully Edward Verrall Lucas

One of the most serious thoughts that life provokes is the reflection that we can never tell, at the time, whether a word, a look, a touch, an occurrence of any kind, is trivial or important.

Character | Important | Life | Life | Reflection | Time | Wisdom |

Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, also Moses Hayyim Luzzato, known by Hebrew acronym RaMCHal

Every aspect of our lives is a challenge and a test. With this perspective, life will never be boring or mundane. Every single situation and occurrence is different from each other and each is an opportunity for elevation and growth.

Challenge | Character | Growth | Life | Life | Opportunity | Will |