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

Harrison Eugene Havens

The bravest and best men of all times have perished in the struggles against tyranny and despotism, and free government has never secured even a feeble existence save at a most fearful cost. The experiment of republican government in our own country is similar to that of all others. Here, however, liberty has won her grandest triumphs. Here freedom is enthroned securely and is the unchallenged boon of every inhabitant. But we contemplate the cost of victory with mournful and pitying hearts.

Cost | Existence | Experiment | Freedom | Government | Liberty | Men | Tyranny | Wisdom | Government |

Molly Haskell

But one of the attributes of love, like art, is to bring harmony and order out of chaos, to introduce meaning and affect where before there was none, to give rhythmic variations, highs and lows to a landscape that was previously flat.

Art | Harmony | Love | Meaning | Order | Wisdom |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming"! That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world... The belief in the freedom of the will is inconsistent with the truth of evolution. Modern philosophy shows clearly that the will is never really free in man or animal, but determined by the organization of the brain; and that in turn acquires its individual character by the laws of heredity and the influence of environment.

Belief | Change | Character | Evolution | Existence | Freedom | Heredity | Individual | Influence | Lesson | Man | Nothing | Organization | Philosophy | Truth | Will | Wisdom | World |

Richard Hooker

Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is thy bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things do her homage, the very least as feeling her care; and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.

Angels | Care | God | Harmony | Joy | Law | Men | Mother | Peace | Power | Wisdom | World |

David Hume

If suicide be supposed a crime, it is only cowardice can impel us to it. If it be no crime, both prudence and courage should engage us to rid ourselves at once of existence when it becomes a burden.

Courage | Cowardice | Crime | Existence | Prudence | Prudence | Suicide | Wisdom |

Victor Hugo

The world of sleep has an existence of its own.

Existence | Wisdom | World |

Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers

All forms of the corporeal world are transitory, [but] for pure existence there is only a passing away of which it has no knowledge. Foundering requires knowledge, and than a reaction to it... Man alone can founder, and this capacity is to him not unequivocal: it challenges him to react to it.

Capacity | Existence | Knowledge | Man | Wisdom | World |

William James

The world of our consciousness consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner ‘state’ in which the thinking comes to pass. What we think of may be enormous - the cosmic times and spaces, for example - whereas the inner state may be the most fugitive and paltry activity of the mind. Yet the cosmic objects, so far as the experience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose existence we do not inwardly possess but only point outwardly, while the inner state is our very experience itself; its reality and that of our experience are one.

Consciousness | Example | Existence | Experience | Mind | Reality | Thinking | Time | Wisdom | World | Think |

Herrick Johnson

God is merely tuning the soul as an instrument, in this life. And these joys of the Christian, are only the notes and chords that are sounded out in the preparation - preludes to the perfect harmony that shall flood the soul - forerunners of the perfected and rapturous joy that shall bless the soul, in that exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

Eternal | Glory | God | Harmony | Joy | Life | Life | Soul | Wisdom |

R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing

When the Copernican Revolution superseded the ancient Polemic world view, the earth took its rightful place as one planet among many. Man was no longer the center of the universe and though his self-image was deflated, he grew in maturity. In the same way, we must take our rightful place in nature - not as its self-centered and profligate "master" with the divine right of kings to exploit and despoil, but as one species living in harmony with the whole.

Earth | Exploit | Harmony | Man | Nature | Revolution | Right | Self | Universe | Wisdom | World |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

All coming into existence takes place with freedom, not by necessity. Nothing comes into existence by virtue of a logical ground, but only by a cause. Every cause terminates in a freely effecting cause.

Cause | Existence | Freedom | Necessity | Nothing | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz

Souls act according to the laws of final causes through appetitions, ends, and means. Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes or motions. And the two realms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, are in harmony with one another.

Ends | Harmony | Means | Wisdom |

J. Z. Knight, fully Judy Zebra Knight, born Judity Darlene Hampton

Mere survival has always been the surface, bottom-line surface for our existence... Survival alone does not ennoble us... True meaning... can be found in what we’ve yet to accomplish, in the realm of the unknown. We must resolve to look deep within, at the unrealized potential of our unevolved selves. Materially, the unknown is one vast nothingness; potentially, it is all things. The unknown within us is where all dreams, thoughts and genius are frozen. The act of searching to make known the unknown triggers the brain. It allows us to incorporate, in ourselves, a greater consciousness, lighting the way for our dreams to enact themselves. Although we seem small in comparison with the whole universe, we are equipped with the greatest cosmic hookup ever created: the human brain. The brain - linked unconsciously to the infinite mind where the unknown resides - only facilitates thoughts, it does not create it. In struggling to find the answer to why we exist, we awaken the infinite mind to the unknown, making known the unknown, bringing meaning to our existence and commonness to all.

Consciousness | Dreams | Existence | Genius | Meaning | Mind | Survival | Universe | Wisdom |

Aldo Leopold

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.

Conservation | Harmony | Land | Men | Wisdom |

D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence

Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.

Death | Existence | Mankind | Wisdom |

R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing

Violence attempts to constrain the other's freedom, to force him to act in the way we desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the other's own existence or destiny.

Desire | Destiny | Existence | Force | Freedom | Indifference | Wisdom |

Jacques Maritain

This divination of the spiritual in the things of sense, and which expresses itself I the things of sense, is precisely what we call Poetry. Metaphysics too pursues a spiritual prey, but in a very different formal object. Whereas metaphysics stands in the line of knowledge and of the contemplation of truth, poetry stands in the line of making and of the delight procured by beauty. The difference is an all-important one, and one that it would be harmful to disregard. Metaphysics snatches at the spiritual in an idea, by the most abstract intellection; poetry reaches it in the flesh, by the very point of the sense sharpened through intelligence... Metaphysics gives chase to essences and definitions, poetry to any flash of existence glittering by the way, and any reflection of an invisible order. Metaphysics isolates mystery in order to know it; poetry, thanks to the balances it constructs, handles and utilizes mystery as an unknown force.

Abstract | Beauty | Contemplation | Existence | Force | Important | Intelligence | Knowledge | Metaphysics | Mystery | Object | Order | Poetry | Reflection | Sense | Truth | Wisdom | Contemplation |