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

Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear is lurking.

Character | Fear | Hate |

Euripedes NULL

No man on earth is truly free. All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform.

Character | Conscience | Earth | Fear | Man | Money | Necessity | Opinion | Public |

John Dewey

A primary responsibility of educators is that they not only be aware of the general principle of the shaping of actual experience by environing conditions, but that they also recognize in the concrete what surroundings, physical and social, that exist so as to extract from them all that they have to contribute to building up experiences that are worthwhile.

Character | Experience | Responsibility |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

Constantly giving to someone will increase your love for that person.

Character | Giving | Love | Will |

John Dewey

We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything.

Character | Experience | Future | Meaning | Present | Time |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.

Character | Children | Duty | Eternal | Little | Love | Marriage |

Martin Esslin, fully Martin Julius Esslin

The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaninglessness.

Ability | Character | Dignity | Man | Reality |

Hans Denk

All externals must yield to love; for they are for the sake of love, and not love for them.

Character | Love |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

In reality a major part of pleasure in obtaining things is overcoming the obstructions that stood in our way. Once we realize this, we will be able to decrease our desire for those things that are spiritually or physically harmful just by examining them objectively and seeing that we are not missing so much. At the same time, we can gain more pleasure from spiritual accomplishments by focusing on how much we are missing in this area and can feel the sense of accomplishment in overcoming the necessary difficulties.

Accomplishment | Character | Desire | Pleasure | Reality | Sense | Time | Will |

Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski

Much on earth is hidden from us, but to make up for that we have been given a precious mystic sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why the philosophers say that we cannot apprehend the reality of things on earth.

Character | Earth | Feelings | Reality | Sense | World |

Sholom B. Dubov

The purpose of life is to do the right thing at the right time... Everything that comes your way is your purpose in life... put it into an order, a perspective.

Character | Life | Life | Order | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Time |

Albert Einstein

What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Organic | Question | Religion | Sense |

Eugen Drewermann

The hands that we put around each other in love and the invisible hand that protects all lovers: In their grasp lies all the meaning that this life can bear.

Character | Life | Life | Love | Meaning |

Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himsefl without love he gives away his passions and coarse pleasuures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himsefl. The man wholies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone.

Character | Distinguish | Love | Lying | Man | Men | Order | Respect | Truth | Respect |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the grief of one who falls from the serene activity into the absorbing soul wasting struggle.

Character | Grief | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Soul | Struggle | Thought | Thought | Understand |

Helen Gahagan Douglas

Character isn’t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains.

Action | Anger | Character | Fear | Hate | Mind | Self | Thought | Thought |

Henry Havelock Ellis

Jealousy: that dragon which slays love under the pretense of keeping it alive.

Character | Jealousy | Love |

Cyrus the Great, aka Cyrus the Elder, Cyrus II or Cyrus of Persia NULL

All men have their frailties; and whoever looks for a friend without imperfections, will never find what he seeks. We love ourselves notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like manner.

Character | Frailties | Friend | Looks | Love | Men | Will | Friends |