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

Kenneth Ring

The meaning of life has something to do with realizing that our essence is perfect love, then going on to live our lives upon that truth, experiencing each day as a miracle and every act as sacred.

Character | Day | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Sacred | Truth |

Phyllis V. Schlemmer and Dalden Jenkins

Our bodies and egos are vehicles by which we can access the experience of physical living. As a key ingredient in an automobile is its driver, so the key ingredient in a person is soul. Without active alignment to soul - a person is lost - the fundamental meaning of life is missing. Planet Earth is a sort of “soul-field”, a body of experience with a characteristic flavor, which individual souls enter to learn, evolve and serve. Perhaps it is a Hall of Mirrors at a fairground, where we see ourselves reflected, expanded and compressed in so many different ways.

Body | Character | Earth | Experience | Individual | Life | Life | Meaning | Soul |

Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, aka Beis Halevi

Anyone who runs after worldly pleasures is running after something that does not really exist. The reality is that the pleasure he seeks will not be found in the matter he desires.

Character | Pleasure | Reality | Will |

Albert Schweitzer

Wherever there is lost the consciousness that every man is an object of concern for us just because he is a man, civilization and morals are shaken, and the advance to fully developed inhumanity is only a question of time.

Character | Civilization | Consciousness | Inhumanity | Man | Object | Question | Time |

Abba Hillel Silver

There is evil in the world, but it can be overcome through repentance and aspiration, and therein lies the true meaning and adventure in life.

Adventure | Aspiration | Character | Evil | Life | Life | Meaning | Repentance | World |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

To will and not to do when there is opportunity, is in reality not to will; and to love what is good and not to do it, when it is possible, is in reality not to love it.

Character | Good | Love | Opportunity | Reality | Will |

John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury

There is no readier way for a man to bring his own worth into question than by endeavoring to detract from the worth of other men.

Character | Man | Men | Question | Worth |

H. W. Andrews

While an open mind is priceless, it is priceless only when its owner has the courage to make a final decision which closes the mind for action after the process of viewing all sides of the question has been completed. Failure to make a decision after due consideration of all the facts will quickly brand a man unfit for a position of responsibility. Not all of your decisions will be correct. None of us is perfect. But if you get into the habit of making decisions, experience will develop your judgment to a point where more and more of your decisions will be right. After all, it is better to be right 51 percent of the time and get something done, than it is to get nothing done because you fear to reach a decision.

Action | Better | Consideration | Courage | Decision | Experience | Failure | Fear | Habit | Judgment | Man | Mind | Nothing | Position | Question | Responsibility | Right | Time | Will | Wisdom | Failure |