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

David Hume

The worst speculative skeptic ever I knew was a much better man than the most superstitious devotee and bigot.

Better | Character | Man | Skeptic |

David Hume

Reason is the discovery of truth or falsehood. Truth or falsehood consists in an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact. Whatever, therefore, is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason. Now ‘tis evident our passions, volitions, and actions, are not susceptible of any such agreement or disagreement; being original facts and realities, complete in themselves, and implying no reference to other passions, volitions, and actions. ‘Tis impossible, therefore, they can be pronounced either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason.

Character | Disagreement | Discovery | Existence | Falsehood | Ideas | Object | Reason | Truth | Discovery |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The relationship between moral action and spiritual knowledge is circular, as it were, and reciprocal. Selfless behavior makes possible an accession of knowledge, and the accession of knowledge makes possible the performance of further and more genuinely selfless actions, which in their turn enhance the agent’s capacity for knowing... A man undertakes right action (which includes, of course, right consciousness and right meditation), and this enables him to catch a glimpse of the Self that underlies his separate individuality. Having seen his own self as the Self, he becomes selfless (and therefore acts selflessly) and in virtue of selflessness he is to be conceived as unconditioned.

Action | Behavior | Capacity | Character | Consciousness | Individuality | Knowing | Knowledge | Man | Meditation | Relationship | Right | Self | Virtue | Virtue |

Bruce Van Horn

One of the most important trips a man can make is that involved in meeting the other half way.

Character | Important | Man |

L. Ron Hubbard, fully Lafayette Ron Hubbard

A man who is willing to accept restriction and barriers and is not afraid of them is free. A man who does nothing but fight restrictions and barriers will usually be trapped.

Character | Man | Nothing | Will | Afraid |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

It is in the light of our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality that we formulate our conceptions of right and wrong; and it is in the light of our conceptions of right and wrong that we frame our conduct.

Character | Conduct | Light | Nature | Reality | Right | Wrong |

William James

I [have] often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one.

Argument | Character | Existence | Life | Life | Man |

Anna Jameson

It is not poverty so much as pretence that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up a hollow show that must soon come to an end. Have the courage to appear poor, and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting.

Character | Courage | Man | Mind | Poverty | Struggle |

Saint Jerome, aka Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymous, Hierom or Jerom NULL

Let us learn upon earth those things which can call us to heaven.

Character | Earth | Heaven | Learn |

Gerald White Johnson

No man was ever endowed with a right without being at the same time saddled with a responsibility.

Character | Man | Responsibility | Right | Time |

Trevor Huddleston

We are created by God for union with Himself... That’s really the meaning of heaven too: fulfillment, wholeness... Though no man has seen God, we have to learn how to love God through loving one another.

Character | Fulfillment | God | Heaven | Love | Man | Meaning | Wholeness | God | Learn |

David Hume

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Universe |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Knowledge of what is happening now does not determine the event. What is ordinarily called God’s foreknowledge is in reality a timeless now-knowledge, which is compatible with the freedom of the human creature’s will in time.

Character | Freedom | God | Knowledge | Reality | Time | Will |

John James Ingalls

Every man is the center of a circle, whose fatal circumference he can not pass.

Character | Man | Wisdom |

Maria Jane Jewsbury

Love is the purification of the heart from self; it strengthens and ennobles the character; gives higher motive and nobler aim to every action of life, and makes both man and woman strong, noble, and courageous. The power to love truly and devotedly is the nobles gift with which a human being can be endowed; but it is a sacred fire that must not be burned to idols.

Action | Character | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Power | Sacred | Self | Woman |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

Character | Self | Universe |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.

Character | Man |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

The more a man denies himself, the more he shall obtain from God.

Character | God | Man |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong, or by the tyrant's threatening countenance.

Cause | Character | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Wrong |