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

Emmet Fox

A covenant is a contract. When two people enter into a covenant, it means that one party undertakes to do certain things provided the other party does certain other things. Thus it is a mutual agreement… If you think only kindly, , optimistic, and constructive thoughts, if you will speak only positive and helpful words at all times, if you will do only good and constructive deeds, you will be fulfilling your side of the great covenant – and in no circumstances could God fail to fulfill His.

Circumstances | Deeds | God | Good | Means | People | Will | Words | God | Think |

Mu-mon Gensen, also Mumon Gensen

Words cannot describe everything. The heart’s message cannot be delivered in words. If one receives words literally, he will be lost. If he tries to explain with words, eh will not attain enlightenment in this life.

Enlightenment | Heart | Life | Life | Will | Words |

Sidney Greenberg

Some of the most sacred promises are made without words in the silent sanctuary of the soul.

Sacred | Soul | Words |

O. Henry, pen name for William Sydney Porter

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving.

Art | Business | Family | Love | Man | Nothing | Patriotism | Religion | Words | Business | Art |

Robert K. Greenleaf

Responsibility . . . requires that a person think, speak and act as if personally accountable to all who may be affected by his or her thoughts, words and deeds… Awareness is important… Am I moving in the right direction? Is my sense of responsibility growing, deepening, becoming sharper and more insistent?.. A sense of responsibility is an attitude, a feeling.

Awareness | Deeds | Important | Responsibility | Right | Sense | Words | Awareness |

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 |

Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels.

Soul | Words |

Carson McClullers

Three words were in the captain’s heart. He shaped them soundlessly with his trembling lips, as he had not breath to spare for a whisper, “I am lost.” And having given up life, the captain suddenly began to live.

Heart | Life | Life | Words |

Mishnah or The Mishnah NULL

There are seven marks of a wise man. The wise man does not speak before him who is greater than he in wisdom; and does not break in upon the speech of his fellow; he is not hasty to answer; he questions according to the subject matter; and answers to the point; he speaks upon the first thing first, and the last; regarding that which he has not understood he says, I do not understand it, and he acknowledges the truth.

Man | Speech | Truth | Wisdom | Wise | Understand |

Gabriela Mistral

The poet is an untier of knots, and love wqithout words is a knot, and it drowns.

Love | Words |

Judith M. Newman

Children seem to learn to talk by inventing their own words and rules: by experimenting with language. Children make statements to adults and then wait for adults to put the statements into adult language so they can make a comparison… If the adult says nothing or simply continues the conversation, the child assumes his or her utterance is correct. When adults “correct” – that is, expand in adult language what the children have said – they are providing feedback. The adult and the child are actually speaking different languages, but they understand the situation, the child can compare their different ways of saying the same thing.

Children | Conversation | Language | Nothing | Words | Child | Learn | Understand |

Nasir Khusraw, fully Abu Mo’in Hamid ad-Din Nasir ibn Khusraw al-Qubadiani or Nāsir Khusraw Qubādiyānī, also spelled as Nasir Khusrow and Naser Khosrow

Your words are the seed, your soul is the farmer, the world is your field; let the farmer look to the sowing, that the soil may abundance yield.

Abundance | Soul | Words | World |

Thomas Paine

Those words, “temperate and moderate,” are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing moderately good, if not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is a species of vice.

Cowardice | Cunning | Good | Moderation | Temper | Virtue | Virtue | Words | Moderation |

Arabian Proverbs

The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers; Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

Words |