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

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Deliverance is out of time into eternity, and is achieved by obedience and docility to the eternal Nature of Things. We have been given free will, in order that we may will our self-will out of existence and so come to live continuously in a “state of grace.” All our actions must be directed, in the last analysis, to making ourselves passive in relation to the activity and the being of divine Reality. We are, as it were, aeolian harps, endowed with the power either to expose themselves to the wind of the Spirit or to shut themselves away from it.

Character | Docility | Eternal | Eternity | Existence | Free will | Grace | Nature | Obedience | Order | Power | Reality | Self | Spirit | Time | Will |

Max Horkheimer

The contradiction between what is requested of man and what can be offered to him has become so striking, the ideology so thin, the discontents in civilization so great that they must be compensated through annihilation of those who do not conform, political enemies, Jews, asocial persons, the insane. The new order of fascism is reason revealing itself as unreason.

Character | Civilization | Contradiction | Man | Order | Reason |

David Hume

The spirit of the people must frequently be roused, in order to curb the ambition of the court; and the dread of rousing this spirit must be employed to prevent that ambition. Nothing so effectual to this purpose as the liberty of the press; by which all the learning, wit, and genius of the nation, may be employed on the side of freedom, and every one be animated to its defense.

Ambition | Character | Defense | Dread | Freedom | Genius | Learning | Liberty | Nothing | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Spirit | Wit | Ambition |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

We cannot presume to know what’s best for another soul. We have no way of knowing where that soul has been, what road it has traveled, what its secrets are, and what lessons it needs in order to attain spiritual awareness.

Awareness | Character | Knowing | Order | Soul |

Thomas Hughes

The conscience of every man recognizes courage as the foundation of manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human character.

Character | Conscience | Courage | Man | Manliness | Perfection |

Anna Jameson

Never was the voice of conscience silenced without retribution.

Character | Conscience |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

A man could not have anything upon his conscience if God did not exist, for the relationship between the individual and God, the God-relationship, is the conscience, and that is why it is so terrible to have even the least thing upon one’s conscience, because one is immediately conscious of the infinite weight of God.

Character | Conscience | God | Individual | Man | Relationship | God |

B. C. Kher

Both the saint and the scientist must possess the same qualities in order to attain their ideals. But these qualities are selfless devotion, a meticulous love of truth, infinite patience, thoroughness, and a depth of mind which does not resent criticism. Without these qualities neither of the two can reach his goal. It is my firm belief that the goal which both science and religion reach by different routes is one and the same.

Belief | Character | Criticism | Devotion | Ideals | Love | Mind | Order | Patience | Qualities | Religion | Science | Truth |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Happiness is not pleasure, it is order. With order come freedom, and with freedom there is responsibility.

Character | Freedom | Order | Pleasure | Responsibility |

Sergei Kovalyov, also spelled Kovalev

I am here in order to fulfill the designs of my Creator as I understand them and to the best of my ability... Each one of us creates his own picture of the world, tortuously building an ideal in order to try to live in accordance with it. In that sense, there is no difference between a believer and an agnostic, since an ideal is something that, once raised, transcends man. Thus, we are here in order to “hoist our spirit without anchoring it upon anything,” as one of the ancient Chinese philosophers said. We must admit that that foundations are indeed shaky.

Ability | Agnostic | Character | Man | Order | Sense | Spirit | World | Understand |

Saint Lambert or Landebertus, aka Lambert of Maastricht NULL

We cheat ourselves in order to enjoy a calm conscience without possessing virtue.

Character | Conscience | Order | Virtue | Virtue |

Madame de Lambert, fully Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, Marquise de Lambert

We cheat ourselves in order to enjoy a quiet conscience, without possessing virtue.

Character | Conscience | Order | Quiet | Virtue | Virtue |

Walter Savage Landor

A man's vanity tells him what is honor; a man's conscience what is justice.

Character | Conscience | Honor | Justice | Man |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

In the hour of death the only adequate consolation is that one has not evaded life, but has endured it. What a man shall accomplish or not accomplish, does not lie in his power to decide; he is not the One who will guide the world; he has only to obey... The point consists precisely in loving his neighbor, or, what is essentially the same thing, in living equally for every man. Every other point of view is a contentious one, however advantageous and comfortable and apparently significant this position may be... yet in the hour of death, he will confidently dare say to his soul: “I have done my best; whether I have accomplished anything, I do not know; whether I have helped anyone, I do not know; but that I have lived for them, that I do know, and I know it from the fact that they insulted me. And this is my consolation, that I shall not have to take the secret with me to the grave, that I, in order to have good and undisturbed and comfortable days in life, have denied my kinship to other men, kinship with the poor, in order to live in aristocratic seclusion, or with the distinguished, in order to live in secret obscurity.

Character | Consolation | Death | Good | Grave | Life | Life | Man | Men | Obscurity | Obscurity | Order | Position | Power | Seclusion | Soul | Will | World |

Douglas Ellsworth Lurton

When you determine what you want, you have made the most important decision of your life. You have to know what you want in order to attain it.

Character | Decision | Important | Life | Life | Order |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Obstinacy is the strength of the weak. Firmness founded upon principle, upon the truth and right, order and law, duty and generosity, is the obstinacy of sages.

Character | Duty | Firmness | Generosity | Law | Order | Right | Strength | Truth |

Mustapha Mahmoud

At first glance, life appears meaningless, futile, full of contradictions and absurdities. But a deeper, meditating look uncovers beauty, order and harmony, revealing life as a supreme accomplishment of eternal wisdom... All of creation is an act of love and providence, a drama imbued with meaning... In simple words: Life is a mission of awareness and awakening and deep enlightenment. We are here to sense this divine presence beyond all phenomena. We are here to recognize a deep urge in our hearts to act in harmony, in conformity and in love with these divinities.

Accomplishment | Awakening | Awareness | Beauty | Character | Conformity | Enlightenment | Eternal | Harmony | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mission | Order | Phenomena | Providence | Sense | Wisdom | Words | Awareness |