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

Yosef Y. Hurwitz

Many people are mistaken about how they can improve their situation. They think they will have peace of mind only when they have obtained everything they desire. But this is erroneous. Gratifying desires does not bring lasting satisfaction. The only path to achieve satisfaction is to stop desiring more things. As long as a person is unable to control his desiring, his problems will not be overcome... The only way to find real satisfaction in life is to stop desiring what is beyond your reach.

Character | Control | Desire | Life | Life | Mind | Peace | People | Problems | Will | Think |

Eleazar Rokeach, Eleazor ben Judah ben Kalonymus, aka Eleazar of Worms

Hate ruins the very savor of food, the peace of sleep, all reverence in the soul.

Character | Hate | Peace | Reverence | Soul |

James Joll

The tragedy of all political action is that some problems have no solution; none of the alternatives are intellectually consistent or morally uncompromising; and whatever decision is taken will harm somebody.

Action | Character | Decision | Harm | Problems | Tragedy | Will |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

I have often seen individuals who simply outgrow a problem which had destroyed others. This ‘outgrowing’, revealed itself on further experience to be the raising of the level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through the widening of his view, the insoluble problem, lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out in contrast to a new and strong life-tendency. It was not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so became different itself. What, on a lower level, had led the wildest conflicts and emotions full of panic, viewed from the higher level of the personality, now seemed like a storm in the valley seen from a high mountain top. This does not mean that the thunderstorm is robbed of its reality; it means that instead of being in it, one is now above it.

Character | Consciousness | Contrast | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | Light | Means | Panic | Personality | Reality |

Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL

Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward.

Action | Character | Hope | Reward |

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

Political action is the highest responsibility of a citizen.

Action | Character | Responsibility |

Walter Savage Landor

Delay of justice is injustice.

Character | Delay | Injustice | Injustice | Justice |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Love comes into being only when there is total harmony in oneself, in whatever action one is doing, and so there is no conflict between the outer and the inner.

Action | Character | Harmony | Love |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not?... Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest on futilities.

Character | Man | Question |

Karl Jones

The practice of a totally unreserved awareness is the road to absolute inner acceptance. This acceptance unblocks the space where selfless love and fearlessness are revealed. And the inner peace from which they arise is the way to effective outer peacemaking.

Absolute | Acceptance | Awareness | Character | Love | Peace | Practice | Space | Awareness |

Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ

No man should think that peace comes easily. Peace does not come by merely wanting it, or shouting for it, or marching down Main Street for it. Peace is built brick by brick, mortared by the stubborn effort and the total energy and imagination of able and dedicated men. And it is built in the living faith that, in the end, man can and will master his own destiny.

Character | Destiny | Effort | Energy | Faith | Imagination | Man | Men | Peace | Will | Wisdom | Think |

Gloria D. Karpinski

Nonresistance isn’t passive. Passivity suggests powerlessness. But non-resistance is extremely powerful. It means we’re consciously choosing what we wish to empower. Nonresistance is the action of wisdom that assesses a situation and realizes there is nothing to be gained from fighting it.

Action | Character | Fighting | Means | Nothing | Wisdom |

Louis Kronenberger

With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it.

Action | Character | Thought | Thought |

Abraham Lincoln

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphans - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Battle | Care | Character | Charity | Firmness | God | Malice | Nations | Peace | Right | Work | God |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

The mingled incentives which lead to action are often too subtle and lie too deep for us to analyze.

Action | Character |