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

Max Horkheimer

Good will, solidarity and wretchedness, and the struggle for a better world have now thrown off their religious garb. The attitude of today’s martyrs is no longer patience but action; their goal is no longer their own immortality in the after-life but the happiness of men who come after them for whom they know how to die.

Action | Better | Character | Good | Immortality | Life | Life | Martyrs | Men | Patience | Struggle | Will | World | Happiness |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Immortality is participation in the eternal now of the divine Ground: survival is persistence in one of the forms of time. Immortality is the result of total deliverance.

Character | Eternal | Immortality | Persistence | Survival | Time |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after life.

Cause | Character | Doubt | Harmony | Immortality | Life | Life | Oppression | Order | Soul | World |

Robert Southey

It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.

Absolute | Character | Contentment | Immortality | Man | Nature | Rest | Spirit |

Jesse William Stitt

What we think of ourselves makes a difference in our lives, and belief in immortality gives us the highest values of ourselves. When we so believe, we achieve proportions greater than mere matter.

Belief | Character | Immortality | Think |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Wisdom is of the soul, it is not susceptible of proof, it is its own proof, applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things; something there is in the flot of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Character | Excellence | Immortality | Qualities | Reality | Soul | Wisdom | Excellence |

Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow

When we abandon the thought of immortality we at least have cast out fear. We gain a certain dignity and self-respect. We regard our fellow travelers as companions in the pleasures and tribulations of life... We gain kinship with the world.

Dignity | Fear | Immortality | Life | Life | Regard | Respect | Self | Thought | Tribulations | Wisdom | World | Thought |

Hermetica - Libellus XII NULL

God makes the Aeon, the Aeon makes the Kosmos, the Kosmos makes Time, and Time makes Coming-to-be. The essence of God is the Good, the essence of the Aeon is sameness, the essence of the Kosmos is order, the essence of Time is change, and the essence of Coming-to-be is life. The workings of God are mind and soul, the workings of the Aeon are immortality and duration, the workings of the Aeon are immortality and duration, the workings of the kosmos are re-instatement in identity and re-instatement by substitution, the workings of Time are increase and decrease, and the workings of Coming-to-be are quality and quantity. The aeon then is in God, the Kosmos is in the Aeon, Time is in the Kosmos, and Coming-to-be takes place in Time.

Change | God | Good | Immortality | Life | Life | Mind | Order | Soul | Time | Wisdom | God |

Theodor Haecker

Without love, immortality would be frightful and horrible.

Immortality | Love | Wisdom |

Anna Jameson

The true purpose of education is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop, to their fullest extent, the capacities of every kind with which the god who made us has endowed us.

Education | God | Immortality | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom | God |

Samuel M. Lindsay

Belief in immortality gives dignity to life and enables us to endure cheerfully those trials which come to us all. As the thought of immortality occupies our minds, we gain a clearer conception of duty and are inspired to cultivate character. Living for the future is not coward's philosophy, but an inspiration to noble and unselfish activity.

Belief | Character | Dignity | Duty | Future | Immortality | Inspiration | Life | Life | Philosophy | Thought | Trials | Wisdom | Thought |

William Rothenstein, fully Sir William Rothenstein

There are fashions in immortality as there are trivial fashions. Books and pictures read differently to different generations.

Books | Immortality | Wisdom |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Here is the test of wisdom, wisdom is not finally tested in schools, wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it, wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof, applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things.

Excellence | Immortality | Qualities | Reality | Soul | Wisdom | Excellence |