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

Arthur Stringer, fully Arthur John Arbuthnott Stringer

Genius seems to be the faculty of having faith in everything, and especially in one's self.

Character | Faith | Genius | Self |

Henry Gardiner Adams

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

Faith | Good | Intelligence | Man | Wisdom |

John Hay Allison

Truth is the disciple of the ascetic, the quest of the mystic, the faith of the simple, the ransom of the weak, the standard of the righteous, the doctrine of the meek, and the challenge of Nature. Together, all these constitute the Law of the Universe.

Challenge | Doctrine | Faith | Law | Nature | Truth | Universe | Wisdom |

Richard Whately

When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object of envy, the clamor and abuse by which he is assailed is but the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to the public. And if he is truly a wise man, he will take no more notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. Her only answer to them is to shine on.

Abuse | Character | Envy | Man | Object | Public | Service | Success | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wise |

John Greenleaf Whittier

When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead.

Character | Faith | Honor | Man |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Then still a purpose enclosing all, and over and beneath all, ever since what might be call’d thought, or the budding of thought, fairly began in my youthful mind, I had had a desire to attempt some worthy record of that entire faith and acceptance to justify the ways of God to man... which is the foundation of moral America... to formulate a poem whose every thought or fact should directly or indirectly be or connive at an implicit belief in the wisdom, health, mystery, beauty of every process, every concrete object, every human or other existence, not only consider’d from the point of view of all, but of each. While I can not understand it or argue it out, I fully believe in a clue and purpose in Nature, entire and several; and that invisible spiritual results, just as real and definite as the visible, eventuate all concrete life and all materialism through Time.

Acceptance | Beauty | Belief | Character | Desire | Existence | Faith | God | Health | Justify | Life | Life | Man | Materialism | Mind | Mystery | Nature | Object | Purpose | Purpose | Thought | Time | Wisdom | Beauty | God | Poem | Thought | Understand |

Herbert Sebastian Agar

Every civilization rests on a set of promises... If the promises are broken too often, the civilization dies, no matter how rich it may be, or how mechanically clever. Hope and faith depend on promises; if hope and faith go, everything goes.

Civilization | Faith | Hope | Wisdom |

W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

The relation of faith between subject and object is unique in every case. Hundreds may believe, but each has to believe by himself.

Faith | Object | Unique | Wisdom |

Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani

What is the meaning of life? The meaning may not be expressed in words. It transcends the mind and the intellect. The meaning is to be experienced, realized... It is open to everyone who would live according to certain disciplines... The discipline of duty. Life is a field of duty, not a dance of desires... The discipline of service... We are here to help others... The opposite of love is not hate but apathy... The discipline of silence... The meaning of life is to love God and to give the service of love to the suffering children of God. And to the birds and animals who are God’s children as well.

Apathy | Character | Children | Discipline | Duty | God | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mind | Service | Silence | Suffering | Words | God |

Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune

What I admire in Columbus is not having discovered a world, but his having gone to search for it on the faith of an opinion.

Character | Faith | Opinion | Search | World |

James B. Walker

Men with intellectual light alone may make advances without moral principle, but without that moral principle which gospel faith produces, permanent progress is impossible.

Character | Faith | Light | Men | Progress |

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 |

Joseph L. Baron

A brilliant mind without faith is like a beautiful face without eyes.

Faith | Mind | Wisdom |

Leo Baeck

Through faith man experiences the meaning of the world; through action he is to give to it a meaning.

Action | Faith | Man | Meaning | Wisdom | World |