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

Eric James, fully Canon Eric James

The great danger is that liturgy creates a world of things over against the secular, instead of a vision of the sacredness of the secular.

Danger | Vision | World | Danger |

William James

Philosophy is only a matter of passionate vision rather than of logic - logic only finding reasons for the vision afterwards.

Logic | Philosophy | Vision |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

We live in an age of self-dissipation, of depersonalization. Should we adjust our vision of existence to make our paucity, make a virtue of obtuseness, glorify evasion?

Age | Evasion | Existence | Self | Virtue | Virtue | Vision |

John Hick, fully John Harwood Hick

To see the world as being ruled by a divine love which sets infinite value upon each individual and includes all men in its scope, and yet to live as though the world were a realm of chance in which each must fight for his own interests against the rest, argues a very dim and wavering vision of God’s rule.

Chance | God | Individual | Love | Men | Rest | Rule | Vision | Wavering | World | Value |

Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

To be constantly without desire is the way to have a vision of the mystery of heaven and earth, for constantly to have desire is the means by which their limitations are seen.

Desire | Earth | Heaven | Means | Mystery | Vision |

Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

Because Release is a gift – a reality not earned, not merited, not attained in any way – there flows naturally from the experience of release, the experience of Gratitude. Gratitude can best be defined and understood as the only possible response to a gift, to something recognized as utterly, freely given. Gratitude is the vision – the way of seeing – that recognizes “gift.”

Experience | Gratitude | Reality | Vision |

Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

Happiness – the joy of living – comes in the experience of gratitude that flows forma vision of one’s life as a reality received, a gift given freely and spontaneously. Such a vision removes self from the center, thus healing self-centeredness by revealing the folly of the illusion of control.

Control | Experience | Folly | Gratitude | Illusion | Joy | Life | Life | Reality | Self | Vision |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The primordial experience is the source of [creativity]… In itself it offers no words or images, for it is a vision seen “as in a glass, darkly.” It is merely a deep presentiment that strives to find expression. It is like a whirlwind that seizes everything within reach and, by carrying it aloft, assume a visible shape.

Creativity | Experience | Vision | Words |

Adelaide Love

Oh, give me vision to discern the child behind whatever he may do or say, the wise humility to learn from him the while I strive to teach him day by day.

Day | Humility | Teach | Vision | Wise | Child | Learn |

Bibhuti Mazumder

Prayer is the best means to uplift our consciousness from the imprisonment of personal gratification to the oneness and union with all beings. Prayer consecrates all our actions, removes ignorance, and leads us to an expanded vision of who we really are and feel the richness of life.

Consciousness | Ignorance | Life | Life | Means | Oneness | Prayer | Vision |

Fritz A. Rothschild

The Bible is primarily not man’s vision of God but God’s vision of man. The Bible is not man’s theology but God’s anthropology, dealing with man and what He asks of him rather than with the nature of God. God did not reveal to the prophets eternal mysteries but His knowledge and love of man. It was not the aspiration of Israel to know the Absolute but to ascertain what He asks of man; to commune with His will rather than with His essence.

Absolute | Aspiration | Bible | Eternal | God | Knowledge | Love | Man | Nature | Theology | Vision | Will | Aspiration | God | Bible |

Ssemiao NULL

He who would take good care of his health should be sparing in his tastes, banish his worries, temper his desires, restrain his emotions, take good care of his vital force, spare his words, regard lightly success and failure, ignore sorrows and difficulties, drive away foolish ambitions, avoid great likes and dislikes, calm his vision and his hearing, and be faithful in his internal regimen. How can one have sickness if he does not tire his spirits and worry his soul? Therefore he would nourish his nature should eat only when he is hungry and not fill himself with food, and he should drink only when he is thirsty and not fill himself with too much drink. He should eat little and between long intervals, and not too much and not too constantly. He should aim at being a little hungry when well-filled, and being a little well-filled when hungry. Being well-filled hurts the lungs and being hungry hurts the flow of vital energy.

Care | Emotions | Energy | Failure | Force | Good | Health | Little | Nature | Regard | Soul | Success | Temper | Vision | Words | Worry |

Baird T. Spalding

No two individuals have the same vision of life. It is said that only children and sages are happy because the child has not developed a material sense of value and the same knows that the material has no value. To them form is not the point of consideration but living life.

Children | Consideration | Happy | Life | Life | Sense | Vision | Child | Value |

Henry Suso

A vision is to be esteemed the more noble the more intellectual it is, the more it is stripped of all image and approaches the state of pure contemplation.

Contemplation | Vision |

William Wordsworth

Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy, but he beholds the light, and whence it flows, he sees it in his joy; the youth, who daily farther from the east must travel, still is Nature’s priest, and by the vision splendid is on his way attended; at length the man perceives it die away, and fade into the light of common day.

Day | Heaven | Infancy | Joy | Light | Man | Nature | Prison | Vision | Youth |