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 Zev Leipowitz

We usually view praying due to suffering that the suffering comes because of external situations and hence we have to pray. But this is not correct. The purpose of the suffering was that we should pray. By pouring our hearts to the Almighty, we become closer to Him and the suffering is a tool for our elevation.

Character | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering |

Theodore T. Munger

There is no road to success but through a clear strong purpose. Nothing can take its place. A purpose underlies character, culture, position, attainment of every sort.

Attainment | Character | Culture | Nothing | Position | Purpose | Purpose | Success |

David O. McKay

Find a purpose in life so big it will challenge every capacity to be at your best.

Capacity | Challenge | Character | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Will |

David O. McKay

The true purpose of life, aside from resisting oppression from without, each individual carries within himself, the responsibility of living nobly or ignobly.

Character | Individual | Life | Life | Oppression | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility |

Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows.

Character | Heart | Injustice | Injustice | Integrity | Patience | Purpose | Purpose |

Ronald E. Osborn

When the taste is purified, the morals are not easily corrupted. Whatever injures the body, the morals, or the mind, will lessen or vitiate taste; thus, disorders of the body and violent passions of the mind, will do this, and so will also excessive care or covetousness; but above all, a habit of intemperance, and keeping low company will greatly deprave that which was once a good taste.

Body | Care | Character | Good | Habit | Intemperance | Mind | Taste | Will |

Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

If you lend a person any money, it becomes lost for any purpose as one’s own. When you ask for it back again, you may find a friend made an enemy by your kindness. If you begin to press still further, either you must part with that which you have intrusted, or else you must lose that friend.

Character | Enemy | Friend | Kindness | Money | Purpose | Purpose |

Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, born Frederick Lawrence

If I were asked to sum up in a single phrase the main purpose of individual life I would express it as the enlargement of personality. Unless an individual can transcend the limits of class, sex, race, age and creed, his personality remains of necessity to that extent incomplete.

Age | Character | Creed | Individual | Life | Life | Necessity | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Wisdom |

Ross Parmenter

The need for devotion to something outside ourselves is even more profound than the need for companionship. If we are not to go to pieces or wither away, we all must have some purpose in life; for no man can live for himself alone.

Character | Devotion | Life | Life | Man | Need | Purpose | Purpose |

Norzi NULL

The purpose of serving God... is to promote man's perfection.

Character | God | Man | Perfection | Purpose | Purpose |

Sinéad O’Connor, fully Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor

The purpose of life is to find the truth and make it come into everything you do, from one end of the day to the other.

Character | Day | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Truth |

Leo Rosten, fully Leo Calvin Rosten, pen name Leonard Q. Ross

The purpose of life is not to be happy - but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

Character | Happy | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wise, more liberated and luminous state of being. Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit to it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy.

Character | Ecstasy | Evolution | Force | Mission | Mystical | Purpose | Purpose | Wise |

Grady Poulard

The measure of a man is not determined by his show of outward strength or the volume of his voice or the thunder of his action. It is to be seen rather in terms of the strength of his inner self in terms of the nature and depth of his commitments the sincerity of his purpose and his willingness to continue "growing up."

Action | Character | Man | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Sincerity | Strength |