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

Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne

An hour spent in hate is an eternity withdrawn from love.

Character | Eternity | Hate | Love |

William Blake

The voice of the Devil. All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors: 1. That man has two real existing principles; vis; a body and a soul. 2. That energy, called evil, is alone from body, and that reason, called good, is alone from the soul. 3. That God will torment man in eternity for the following energies. But the following contraries to these are true: 1. Man has no body distinct from his soul; for that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of the soul in this age. 2. Energy is the only life, and is from the body; and reason is bound or outward circumference of energy. 3. Energy is eternal delight.

Age | Body | Character | Devil | Energy | Eternal | Eternity | Evil | God | Good | Life | Life | Man | Principles | Reason | Sacred | Soul | Will | Following | God |

Thomas Boston

None can comprehend eternity but the eternal God. Eternity is an ocean, whereof we shall never see the shore; it is a deep, where we can find no bottom; a labyrinth from whence we cannot extricate ourselves and where we shall ever lose the door.

Character | Eternal | Eternity | God |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon; and splendors born only of the earth eclipse the stars. So a man sometimes covers up the entire disc of eternity with a dollar and quenches transcendent glories with a little shining dust.

Character | Earth | Eternity | Little | Man |

George Barrell Cheever

As character to be used for eternity must be formed in time and in good time, so good habits to be used for happiness in this life must be formed early; and then they will be a treasure to be desired in the house of the wise, and an oil of life in their dwellings.

Character | Eternity | Good | Life | Life | Time | Will | Wise | Happiness |

Emil Fackenheim, fully Emil Ludwig Fackenheim

A life shot through with the tragedy of death is better - more human, more heroic - than a life of meaninglessness, even though pleasurable and comfortable.

Better | Character | Death | Life | Life | Tragedy |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Character | Death | Eternity | Good | Man | Time |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Time is given us that we may take care for eternity; and eternity will not be too long to regret the loss of our time if we have misspent it.

Care | Character | Eternity | Regret | Time | Will | Loss |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The present moment is the only aperture through which the soul can pass out of time into eternity, through which grace can pass out of eternity into the soul, and through which charity can pass from one soul in time to another soul in time.

Character | Charity | Eternity | Grace | Present | Soul | Time |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The causal process takes place within time and cannot possibly result in deliverance from time. Such a deliverance can only be achieved as a consequence of the intervention of eternity in the temporal domain; and eternity cannot intervene unless the individual will makes a creative act of self-denial, thus producing, as it were, a vacuum into which eternity can flow.

Character | Eternity | Individual | Self | Self-denial | Time | Will |

James Joll

The tragedy of all political action is that some problems have no solution; none of the alternatives are intellectually consistent or morally uncompromising; and whatever decision is taken will harm somebody.

Action | Character | Decision | Harm | Problems | Tragedy | Will |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the appalling silence of the so-called good people. It may be that our generation will have to repent not only for the diabolical actions and vitriolic words of the children of darkness, but also for the crippling fears and tragic apathy of the children of light.

Apathy | Character | Children | Darkness | Good | Light | People | Silence | Tragedy | Will | Words |

Alexander Maclaren

Transiency is stamped on all our possessions, occupations, and delights. We have the hunger for eternity in our souls, the thought of eternity in our hearts, the destination for eternity written on our inmost being, and the need to ally ourselves with eternity proclaimed by the most short-lived trifles of time. Either these things will be the blessing or the curse of our lives. Which do you mean that they shall be for you?

Character | Eternity | Hunger | Need | Possessions | Thought | Time | Trifles | Will | Thought |

Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes

The thought of eternity consoles for the shortness of life.

Character | Eternity | Life | Life | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Arthur Ernest Morgan

Lack of something to feel important about is almost the greatest tragedy a man may have.

Character | Important | Man | Tragedy |