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

Elizabeth Gilbert

Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did.

Distress | Effort | Enough | Good | Soul | Will | World | Crisis | Happiness | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

People think a soul mate is the one that fits them perfectly, and we all want. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that hinders and the person that your attention is directed to you, that could change your life. Probably the most important person you'll ever meet, but live forever with soulmate? No. Too painful. Soulmate in your life comes to you revealing a layer you, and then leave. And thank God for that.

Change | Important | Soul | Tears | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.

Peace | Right | Spirit | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

A true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.

Control | Ego | Heart | Light | Little | Purpose | Purpose | Soul |

Elizabeth Gilbert

A woman's place is in the kitchen...sitting in a comfortable chair, with her feet up, drinking a glass of wine and watching her husband cook dinner.

Important | Life | Life | Soul |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.

Fear | Giving | Happy | Love | Will | Learn |

Elizabeth Gilbert

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

Attention | Change | Important | Soul |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I knew then that this is how God loves us all and receives us all, and that there is no such thing in this universe as hell, except maybe in our own terrified minds. Because if even one broken and limited human being could experience even one such episode of absolute forgiveness and acceptance of her own self, then imagine—just imagine!—what God, in all His eternal compassion, can forgive and accept.

Distress | Effort | Enough | Good | People | Soul | Will | World | Crisis | Happiness | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your inner contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.

Attention | Change | God | Important | Life | Life | Soul | God | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity.

Attention | Change | Control | Death | Ego | God | Heart | Important | Life | Life | Light | Little | Love | Marriage | Mind | People | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Relationship | Right | Soul | Space | Time | Universe | Will | God | Afraid | Think | Understand |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Has become my thoughts more like neighbors veterans, annoying, but they have become dear, there is room for all of us in this neighborhood.

Distress | Effort | Enough | Good | Soul | Will | World | Crisis | Happiness |

William Shakespeare

Sweet recreation barred, what doth ensue but moody and dull melancholy, kinsman to grim and comfortless despair; and at their heels, a huge infectious troop of pale distemperatures and foes to life.

Conduct | Good | Peace | Soul | Old |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave.

Eternal | Evolution | God | History | Humanity | Ideas | Individual | Longing | Means | Need | Nothing | Order | Peace | Providence | Right | Sacred | Search | Spirit | Story | Thinking | Thought | Will | Wonder | God | Think | Thought |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

And tulips, children love to stretch their fingers down, to feel in each its beauty's sweet nearer.

Little | Rest | Soul |

Elizabeth Gilbert

So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it.

God | Joy | Mortal | Soul | Strength | God |

Elizabeth Lesser

Spirituality is a brave search for the truth about existence, fearlessly peering into the mysterious nature of life.

Beginning | Happy | Life | Life | Meaning | Soul | Wisdom | Forgive |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Richard didn't even have time to ask if I thought I'd ever amount to anything in this life before I looked him eye to eye and said, I already have, mister.

Apathy | Attention | Care | Day | Health | Mindfulness | Soul |

Elizabeth Gilbert

When you have only two minutes to say good-bye to the person you love most in the world, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again, you can become log-jammed with the effort to say and do and settle everything at once.

Better | Distress | Heart | Inquiry | Question | Security | Will |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

Love | Soul |