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

Elizabeth Gilbert

I remember saying once to my friend Susan, when my marriage was becoming intolerable, I don't want my children growing up in a household like this. Susan said, Why don't you leave those so-called children out of the discussion? They don't even exist yet. Why can't you just admit that you don't want to live in unhappiness anymore?

Balance | Change | Tears | Old | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

My guru says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you are fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it...

Friend | Music | Words | World | Understand |

Elizabeth Gilbert

People think a soul mate is the one that fits them perfectly, and we all want. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that hinders and the person that your attention is directed to you, that could change your life. Probably the most important person you'll ever meet, but live forever with soulmate? No. Too painful. Soulmate in your life comes to you revealing a layer you, and then leave. And thank God for that.

Change | Important | Soul | Tears | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.

Happy | People | Words |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Let it be sufficient to say that, on this night, he was still my lighthouse and albatross in equal measure. The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn’t want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.

Discipline | Peace | Speech | Words | World |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, I honor the divinity that resides within me.

Ability | Lord | Words |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I told him: Maybe you could come to visit me in America someday, Ketut. Navia and shook his head cheerfully resigned to capacity: I cannot Liz, I do not have enough teeth to travel by plane

Absolution | Children | Clemency | Pain | People | Thought | Words | Friends | Thought |

William Shakespeare

Speak of the one that loves not wisely but too well.

Nothing | Tears |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?

Love | Relationship | Tears | Crisis |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Everyone makes their own path, and I must make mine. The Bhagavad Gita - and ancient Indian Yogic text - says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life perfectly. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly. It is mine.

Magic | Words |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Oh Krishna's mind concern, rough, strong and stubborn, and subjected to at least the difficulty of for subjecting the wind

Absolution | Business | Children | Clemency | Pain | People | Right | Thought | Words | Business | Friends | Thought |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.

Discipline | Good | Learning | Peace | Solitude | Speech | Words | World |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.

Tears |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument.

Day | Future | Heart | Love | Lying | Words |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not more grief than ye can weep for. That is well-- that is light grieving!

God | Tears | Vision | Will | God |

Elizabeth Gilbert

So that's it. You have now reached infatuation's fial destination - the complete and merciless devaluation of self.

Love | Relationship | Tears | Crisis |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Therefore to this dog will I, tenderly not scornfully, render praise and favor: with my hand upon his head, is my benediction said therefore and forever.

Laughter | Tears |

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 |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

And there my little doves did sit with feathers softly brown and glittering eyes that showed their right to general Nature's deep delight.

Melancholy | Words |

Elizabeth Gilbert

The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship - just so long as those prayers are sincere.

Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | Pain | Power | Talking | Words |