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

Francis Scott Bradford

Man, though chained to earth, looks across time and space toward an unknown perfection which he may never reach but will forever seek.

Earth | Looks | Man | Perfection | Space | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life. It is only found in men of sound sense and understanding.

Discretion | Life | Life | Men | Perfection | Reason | Sense | Sound | Understanding | Wisdom |

Paul Cézanne

Art is a harmony which runs parallel with nature -- what is one to think of those imbeciles who say that the artist is always inferior to nature?

Art | Harmony | Nature | Wisdom | Think |

Bushman from Kalahari NULL

There is a dream dreaming of us.

Wisdom |

Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

The secret of happiness (and therefore of success) is to be in harmony with existence, to be always willing "to be joined to the universe without being more conscious of it than an idiot," to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.

Existence | Harmony | Life | Life | Little | Success | Universe | Wisdom | Happiness |

William Cowper

Words learned by rote a parrot may rehearse; but talking is not always to converse, not more distinct from harmony divine, the constant creaking of a country sign.

Harmony | Talking | Wisdom | Words |

Auguste Comte, formally Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte

The happiness of every man depends on the harmony between the development of his various faculties and the entire system of circumstances which govern his life.

Circumstances | Harmony | Life | Life | Man | System | Wisdom | Govern | Happiness |

Henry P. Van Dusen

Religion is the reaching out of one's whole being - mind, body, spirit, emotions, intuitions, affections, will - for completion, for inner unity, for true relation with those about us, for right relation to the universe in which we live. Religion is life, a certain kind of life, life as it should and could be, a life of harmony within and true adjustment without - life, therefore, in harmony with the life of God himself.

Body | Emotions | God | Harmony | Life | Life | Mind | Religion | Right | Spirit | Unity | Universe | Will | Wisdom | God |

Thomas Dreier

All progress is made by men of faith who believe in what is right and, what is more important, actually do what is right in their own private affairs. You cannot add to the peace and goodwill of the world if you fail to create an atmosphere of harmony and love right where you live and work.

Faith | Harmony | Important | Love | Men | Peace | Progress | Right | Wisdom | Work | World |

Ann Faraday

A dream is incorrectly interpreted if the interpretation leaves the dreamer unmoved and disappointed. Dreams come to expand, not to diminish us.

Dreams | Wisdom |

Brendan Francis Behan

The prospect of success in achieving our most cherished dream is not without its terrors. Who is more deprived and alone than the man who has achieved his dream?

Man | Success | Wisdom |

Jerry Falwell

No earthly purpose satisfies man’s longing to find his eternal reason for being... Man seeks incessantly for the meaning of life until he discovers the single eternal purpose for his existence. That purpose is the same for every man and woman. God created us because He longs to enter into fellowship with us. We belong to Him by right of creation. We can never know order and harmony in this life until we choose to establish a right relationship with God... Our search for meaning to life will end only when we establish that personal relationship with God and begin our walk with Him - for time and for eternity. Then comes that glorious personal fulfillment described in holy writ as the “peace that passes all understanding.”

Eternal | Eternity | Existence | Fulfillment | God | Harmony | Life | Life | Longing | Man | Meaning | Order | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Relationship | Right | Search | Time | Understanding | Will | Wisdom | Woman | God |

Clarence Edwin Flynn

Aristotle said that all creative people are dissatisfied because they are looking for happiness in perfection and seeking for things that do not exist. This is one of the hopes of the world. There is no progress where people are satisfied. Discontent is perhaps the most potent challenge to improvement.

Challenge | Discontent | Improvement | People | Perfection | Progress | Wisdom | World | Happiness |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular; but reason remains ever the property of an elect few.

Emotions | Property | Reason | Wisdom |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development as supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization.

Achievement | Belief | Civilization | Existence | Faith | Illusion | Instinct | Perfection | Present | Wisdom | Work |