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

William Shakespeare

Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort as if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit that could be moved to smile at anything.

Elizabeth Lesser

Meditation practice is like piano scales, basketball drills, ballroom dance class. Practice requires discipline; it can be tedious; it is necessary. After you have practiced enough, you become more skilled at the art form itself. You do not practice to become a great scale player or drill champion. You practice to become a musician or athlete. Likewise, one does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living.

Attention | Divinity | Longing | Meditation | Mysticism | Nature | Religion | Self | Spirituality | Time | Friends |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

As the moths around a taper, as the bees around a rose, as the gnats around a vapour, so the spirits group and close round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.

Heart | Light | Love | Silence | Speech | Teach | Words |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man.

Abundance | Body | Conversation | Eternal | Experience | Life | Life | Means | Meditation | Money | Need | People | Reading | Spirit | Time | World | Think | Understand |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

English is his third language and some of us were thinking about getting up a fund and sending him back to Berlitz for the remainder of the English language course.

Better | Rage |

Felix Adler

It is the prerogative of man that he need not blindly follow the law of his natural being, but is himself the author of a higher moral law, and creates it even in acting it out.

Confidence | Giving | Good | Influence | Nature | Nobility | Wisdom | Wise |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

If we assume that man actually does resemble God, then we are forced into the impossible theory that God is a coward, an idiot and a bounder.

Italian Proverbs

Of this world each man has as much as he takes.

Life | Life | Men |