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

Barbara Brennan

The meaning of life is experienced when we are in touch with our unique essence, sometimes called the divine spark within... It is both individual and universal. When we are fully aware of this unique inner radiance, we feel what it is to be utterly alive. We experience unconditional love. We sense complete safety because that spark also connects us to the universal divinity within all things.

Character | Divinity | Experience | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Sense | Unique |

Paul Brunton, born Hermann Hirsch, wrote under various pseudonyms including Brunton Paul, Raphael Meriden and Raphael Delmonte

There is only one Duty. It is to realize the divinity within... our most sacred life purpose, the most honored ground of existence, and everything else must be made to subserve it.

Character | Divinity | Duty | Existence | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Sacred |

Richard Cecil

The very heart and root of sin is in an independent spirit. We erect the idol self; and not only wish others to worship, but worship ourselves.

Character | Heart | Self | Sin | Spirit | Worship |

Thomas Chalmers

If it be the characteristic of a worldly man that he desecrates what is holy, it should be of the Christian to consecrate what is secular, and to recognize a present and presiding Divinity in all things.

Character | Divinity | Man | Present |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Self-knowledge leading to self-hatred and humility, is the condition of the love and knowledge of God. Spiritual exercises that make use of distractions have this great merit, that they increase self-knowledge. Every soul that approaches God must be aware of who and what it is. To practice a form of mental or vocal prayer that is, so to speak, above one’s moral station is to act a lie: and the consequences of such lying are wrong notions about God, idolatrous worship of private and unrealistic phantasies and (for lack of the humility of self-knowledge) spiritual pride.

Character | Consequences | God | Humility | Knowledge | Love | Lying | Merit | Practice | Prayer | Pride | Self | Self-hatred | Self-knowledge | Soul | Worship | Wrong | God |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

There is a divinity within you. No matter what your problem appears to be, the real problem is seldom the problem you see. The real problems is your inability or unwillingness to allow this divinity to unfold its plan through you.

Character | Divinity | Plan | Problems |

Washington Irving

After all, it is the divinity within that makes the divinity without; and I have been more fascinated by a woman of talent and intelligence, though deficient in personal charms, than I have been by the most regular beauty.

Character | Divinity | Woman | Talent |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The idolatrous worship of ethical values in and for themselves defeats its own object - and defeats it not only because... there is a lack of all-around development, but also and above all because even the highest forms of moral idolatry are God-eclipsing and therefore guarantee the idolater against the enlightening and liberating knowledge of Reality.

Character | God | Guarantee | Knowledge | Object | Reality | Worship |

William James

The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success - is our national disease.

Character | Disease | Success | Worship |

William James

The exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success is our national disease.

Character | Disease | Success | Worship |

Madame de Motteville, Françoise Bertaut de Motteville

If only man could be induced to laugh more they might hate less, and find more serenity here on earth. If they cannot worship together, or accept the same laws, or tolerate the wonderful diversity of thought and behavior and physique with which they have been blessed, at least they can laugh together.

Behavior | Character | Diversity | Earth | Hate | Man | Serenity | Thought | Worship | Thought |

Barthold Niebuhr, fully Barthold Georg Neibuhr

I cannot worship from abstractions of virtue; she only charms me when she addresses herself to my heart, speaks through the love from which she springs.

Character | Heart | Love | Virtue | Virtue | Worship |

Madame Roland, Jeanne Manon Philon, born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon

Society is ever ready to worship success, but rarely forgives failure.

Character | Failure | Society | Success | Worship |

Shantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar

Freedom is spiritual. Divinity is the expression of integrity... Mind cannot find fun anywhere but God.

Character | Divinity | Freedom | Fun | God | Integrity | Mind |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

When one has this intelligent self-love is commanded to love his neighbor as himself, what else is enjoined than that he shall do all in his power to commend to him the love of God? This is the worship of God, this is true religion, this right piety, this the service due to God only.

God | Love | Piety | Power | Religion | Right | Self | Self-love | Service | Wisdom | Worship | God |