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

Abba Hillel Silver

When is a man free? Now when he is driftwood on the stream of life... free of all cares or worries or ambitions... He is not free at all... To be free in action, in struggle, in undiverted and purposeful achievement, to move forward towards a worthy objective across a fierce terrain of resistance, to be vital and allow in the exercise of a great enterprise - that is to be free, and to know the joy and exhilaration of true freedom. A man is free only when he has an errand on earth.

Achievement | Action | Character | Earth | Freedom | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Struggle |

Albert Schweitzer

The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty.

Beauty | Character | Sense | Soul | Truth | World |

Moshe Schwab

When we pray, we should feel the seriousness of speaking directly to the Almighty. The concept of seriousness should not be mistaken for sadness since sadness is a transgression. Seriousness should stem from the true joy of fulfilling a mitzvah [biblical law or good deed], the joy of having the merit to pray to the Almighty.

Character | Good | Joy | Law | Merit | Sadness |

Janet Erskine Stuart, known as Mother Janet Stuart

People of many kinds ask questions, but few and rare people listen to answers. Why?

Character | People |

Jeremy Taylor

Temperance is reason’s girdle and passions’ bridle, the strength of the soul and the foundation of virtue.

Character | Reason | Soul | Strength | Virtue | Virtue |

Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin

Whatever may happen in the future, I know that I have learned three things which will remain forever convictions of my heart as well as my mind. Life, even the hardest life, is the most beautiful, wonderful and miraculous treasure in the world. Fulfillment of duty is another beautiful thing, making life happy and giving to the soul an unconquerable force to sustain ideals. This is my second conviction, and my third is that cruelty, hatred, and injustice never can and never will be able to create a mental, moral or material millennium.

Character | Convictions | Cruelty | Duty | Force | Fulfillment | Future | Giving | Happy | Heart | Ideals | Injustice | Injustice | Life | Life | Mind | Soul | Will | World |

William L. Sullivan

A moral decision is the loneliest thing that exists. Knowledge is shed abroad everywhere. Anybody may dip his cup into that great sea and take out what he can. It is a public appropriation from a public store. But what the man himself must do as a moral being, what ordering he shall make of his life, what allegiance he shall choose, what cause he shall cleave to - this is decided in that solitude where his soul in authentic presence lives with no other companion than the Final Authority which he recognizes as supreme.

Authority | Cause | Character | Decision | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Public | Solitude | Soul |