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

Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley

The future must have as its basis the consciousness of sanctity in existence – in common things, in the events of human life, in the gradually comprehended interlocking whole revealed to the human desire for knowledge, n the benedictions of beauty and love, in the catharsis, the sacred purging, of the moral drama in which character is pitted against fate and even deepest tragedy may uplift the mind.

Beauty | Character | Consciousness | Desire | Events | Existence | Fate | Future | Knowledge | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Sacred | Tragedy | Fate | Beauty |

Abraham Lincoln

The struggle of today is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also.

Future | Struggle |

Charles Edward Merriam

The future belongs to those who fuse intelligence with faith, and who with courage and determination grope their way forward from chance to choice, from blind adaptation to creative evolution.

Chance | Choice | Courage | Determination | Evolution | Faith | Future | Intelligence |

George Sawyer Pettee

The basic function of a myth is always to govern present action towards future hopes.

Action | Future | Myth | Present | Govern |

Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman

In the end, we must always return to our beliefs. From the mundane to the mystical, they inform us about reality and they shape our future lives. And if the ultimate reality remains a mystery, so much the better, for it is the questions that give us meaning, that drive us forward and fill us with transcendent awe.

Awe | Better | Future | Meaning | Mystery | Mystical | Reality |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

Future | Past | Present |

Fritz A. Rothschild

Eternity is another word for unity. In it, past and future are not apart; here is everywhere, and now goes on forever. The opposite of eternity is diffusion not time. Eternity does not begin when time is at its end. Time is eternity broken into space, like a ray of light refracted in the water… unity is a task, not a condition. The world lies in strife, in discord, in divergence. Unity is beyond not within reality.

Eternity | Future | Light | Past | Reality | Space | Time | Unity | World |

Fritz Jules Roethlisberger

Most people think the future is the ends and the present is the means. In fact, the present is the ends and the future the means.

Ends | Future | Means | People | Present | Think |

Paul H. Ray

Precisely what we need are good theories to focus our attention, a good set of ideals to guide our action, and good visions of the future to mobilize our energies.

Action | Attention | Focus | Future | Good | Ideals | Need | Theories |

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

The future is hidden from us, but the past warns us that the world in the end belongs to the unworldly.

Future | Past | World |

Russian Proverbs

The future belongs to those who know how to wait.

Future |

Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

Past and future are what veil God from our sight. Burn up both of them with fire! How long wilt thou be partitioned by these segments as a reed?

Future | God | Past | God |

Albert Schweitzer

Have you ever considered how dreadful it would be if our lives had no appointed end but went on forever? Can you imagine that as far as the eye can see into the future we should remain enmeshed in all the desires and troubles of this life and that all the ensuing envy, hatred and malice, our own and other people’s should continue to pile up undiminished? If you have ever considered how intolerable the burden of our life would be without the understood certainty that it has an appointed end, you know that death comes to all, even the most fortunate, not as an enemy but as a deliverance.

Death | Enemy | Envy | Future | Life | Life | Malice | People | Troubles |

Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL

Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.

Future | Present |

John Sergieff of Cronstadt, aka Saint John of Kronstadt, born John Iliytch Sergieff

Prayer is the constant feeling (the recognition) of our infirmity or spiritual poverty, the sanctification of the soul, the foretaste of future blessedness, the angelic bliss, the heavenly rain, refreshing, watering, and fertilizing the ground of the soul, the power and strength of the soul and body, the purifying and freshening of the mental air, the enlightenment of the countenance, the joy of spirit, the golden link, uniting the creature to the Creator.

Blessedness | Body | Enlightenment | Future | Joy | Poverty | Power | Prayer | Soul | Spirit | Strength |