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

Jean Shinoda Bolen

I had the opportunity to deliver babies... In each of these numinous moments, I knew that life had meaning; each experience was accompanied by an upwelling of gratitude and humility. These moments, which can be called an experience of the self, or archetype of meaning, are akin to the act of finally seeing the Holy Grail after a long quest... It is through these moments of grace and gratitude that we acquire a sense of meaning and a desire to live a meaningful life. The personal challenge is now.

Challenge | Character | Desire | Experience | Grace | Gratitude | Humility | Life | Life | Meaning | Opportunity | Self | Sense |

Fred Pierce Corson

If we think of life as a journey and consider it to be the opportunity for getting from where we are to where we want to be, we will have a working rule that provides us with both a purpose and expanding possibilities for our lives.

Character | Journey | Life | Life | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Rule | Will | Think |

Sri Chinmoy, born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose

Responsibility is the possibility of opportunity culminating in inevitable fulfillment.

Character | Fulfillment | Inevitable | Opportunity | Responsibility |

Allen E. Claxton

Many men who spend an hour a day in physical exercises to keep fit refuse to spend an hour a week in the cultivation of their morals and their ethics. We have put so little emphasis on developing our souls that our children are beginning to doubt if we have any souls at all.

Beginning | Character | Children | Cultivation | Day | Doubt | Ethics | Little | Men |

Max Ehrmann

“Desiderata" Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Business | Caution | Character | Counsel | Discipline | Distress | Doubt | Dreams | God | Good | Haste | Life | Life | Loneliness | Love | Misfortune | Noise | Peace | Right | Silence | Soul | Spirit | Story | Strength | Surrender | Truth | Universe | Virtue | Virtue | Will | World | Youth | Business | Counsel | Child |

Karlfried Graf Von Dürckheim, fully Karl Friedrich Alfred Heinrich Ferdinand Maria Graf Eckbrecht von Dürckheim-Montmartin

Each moment is a summons calling us to recollect and test ourselves. There is no activity, serving whatever external purpose, that does not contain an opportunity to dedicate ourselves more ardently to the search for truth.

Character | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Search | Truth |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

View every difficult situation as an opportunity to grow and we will feel pleasure instead of pain from such situations. Failure to do so will cause you needless suffering.

Cause | Character | Failure | Opportunity | Pain | Pleasure | Suffering | Will | Failure |

Douglas L. Edmonds, fully Douglas Lyman Edmonds

How many of us are waiting for the opportunity to do some great thing for the betterment of our community, forgetting that the solution of the problem requires only the active intelligent fulfillment of individual civic duty. The only things which are wrong about our Government are the things which are wrong with you and me. Democracy is never a thing done; it is and always will be a goal to be achieved. It means action, not passive acquiescence in things as they are; it requires alertness to duty, a dynamic faith, a willingness to give for the good of all. It can live only as a result of loyalty and devotion to its principles expressed by daily needs.

Action | Character | Democracy | Devotion | Duty | Dynamic | Faith | Fulfillment | Good | Government | Individual | Loyalty | Loyalty | Means | Opportunity | Principles | Waiting | Will | Wrong | Government |

Albert Einstein

Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.

Character | Enemy | Force | Individual | Mankind | Opportunity | Power | Society | Terror | Society |

Philip Doddridge

He is the wisest and happiest man who, by constant attention of thought discovers the greatest opportunity of doing good, and breaks through every opposition that he may improve these opportunities.

Attention | Character | Good | Man | Opportunity | Opposition | Thought | Thought |

Albert Einstein

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.

Beauty | Character | Duty | Influence | Joy | Opportunity | Regard | Spirit | Study | Work | Beauty | Learn |

Charles Richard Hensman

What is called affluence - the consequence of the type of rapid economic development which occurred from about the middle of the nineteenth century - is in a real sense an abundance not just of serious problems which machines cannot solve, but of hopeless poverty: the physical insecurity, personal unhappiness, the intensified morality, the sense of being dwarfed by vast and uncontrollable physical, mechanical and corporate structures, the hatred and contempt of other peoples, the lack of opportunity for contemplation, the loss of community life.

Abundance | Character | Contemplation | Contempt | Insecurity | Life | Life | Machines | Morality | Opportunity | Poverty | Problems | Sense | Unhappiness | Loss |

Ishmael ben Johanan ben Baroka

Who studies with a view to teach will have opportunity to learn and to teach; who studies with a view to practice, will have opportunity to learn, teach and practice.

Character | Opportunity | Practice | Teach | Will | Learn |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

When, in our pain, we turn our attention to life’s purpose, we take up pain as a thread through the labyrinth... But when we deny pain, we are denying life itself. When we flee from pain that we cannot escape, we are fleeing from an opportunity to grow.

Attention | Character | Life | Life | Opportunity | Pain | Purpose | Purpose |

Huang Po, also Huángbò Xīyùn

Your true nature is not lost in moments of delusion, nor is it gained at the moment of enlightenment. It was never born and can never die. It shines through the whole universe, filling emptiness, one with emptiness. It is without time or space, and has no passions, actions, ignorance, or knowledge. In it there are no things, no people, and no Buddhas; it contains not the smallest hairbreadth of anything that exists objectively; it depends on nothing and is attached to nothing. It is all-pervading, radiant beauty: absolute reality, self-existent and uncreated. How then can you doubt that the Buddha has no mouth to speak with and nothing to teach, or that the truth is learned without learning, for who is there to learn? It is a jewel beyond all price.

Absolute | Beauty | Character | Delusion | Doubt | Enlightenment | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Nature | Nothing | People | Price | Reality | Self | Space | Teach | Time | Truth | Universe |

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

There is an aliveness in people who are living life and not merely observing or intellectualizing it... During the time of catastrophic change, each individual has the opportunity to feel fully alive and resource-filled-awake far beyond the daily soporific states of consciousness in which most of us reside. Living on an edge heightens the human awareness. It does not dull it.

Aliveness | Awareness | Change | Character | Consciousness | Individual | Life | Life | Opportunity | People | Time |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an opportunity to develop our talents.

Character | Opportunity |