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

William Makepeace Thackeray

Benevolent feelings ennobles the most trifling actions.

Character | Feelings |

Peter Sterry

Didst thou every descry a glorious eternity in a winged moment of time? Didst thou ever see a bright infinite in the narrow point of an object? Then thou knowest what spirit means - the spire-top, whither all things ascend harmoniously, where they meet and sit contented in an unfathomed Depth of Life.

Character | Eternity | Life | Life | Means | Object | Spirit | Time |

Sufi Proverbs

When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.

Character | Heart | Spirit |

Judy Tatelbaum

Grief is a wound that needs attention in order to heal. To work through and complete grief means to face our feelings openly and honestly, to express and release our feelings fully and to tolerate and accept our feeling for however long it takes for the wound to heal. We fear that once acknowledged grief will bowl us over. The truth is that grief experienced does dissolve. Grief unexpressed is grief that lasts indefinitely.

Attention | Character | Fear | Feelings | Grief | Means | Order | Truth | Will | Work |

John P. Webster

The chiefest action for a man of spirit is never to be out of action; the soul was never put into the body to stand still.

Action | Body | Character | Man | Soul | Spirit |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

The soul is of itself, all verges to it, all has reference to what ensures, all that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence, not a move can a man or woman make, that affects him or her in a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of death, but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime. The indirect is just as much as the direct, the spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body, if not more.

Body | Character | Day | Death | Man | Soul | Spirit | Woman |

Owen D. Young

A mind, if it be open, may change with each new day, abut the spirit and the heart are as unchanging as the tides.

Change | Character | Day | Heart | Mind | Spirit |

Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson

Materialism is decadent and degenerate only if the spirit of the nation has withered and if individual people are so unimaginative that they wallow in it.

Individual | Materialism | People | Spirit | Wisdom |

Yorah Daiah

It is especially important to express your feelings of joy when giving charity to a poor person. Show the person you are glad to be able to help him out. Showing displeasure giving charity erases the merit of giving.

Character | Charity | Feelings | Giving | Important | Joy | Merit |

Waldemar Argow, fully Wendelin Waldemar Wieland Argow

Religion is a hunger for beauty and love and glory. It is wonder and the mystery and majesty, passion and ecstasy. It is emotion as well as mind, feeling as well as knowing, the subjective as well as the objective. It is the heart soaring to heights the head alone will never know; the apprehension of meanings science alone will never find; the awareness of values ethics alone will never reveal. It is the human spirit yearning for, and finding, something infinitely greater than itself which it calls God.

Awareness | Beauty | Ecstasy | Ethics | Glory | God | Heart | Hunger | Knowing | Love | Mind | Mystery | Passion | Religion | Science | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Wonder | Beauty | Awareness |

Richard T. Williams

Watch a man with scrutiny when his will is crossed, and his desires disappointed. The quality of spirit he reveals at that time will determine the character of that man.

Character | Man | Spirit | Time | Will |

Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen

Neither the tenuous things of the human spirit nor the gross material needs of human life can come in contact with this business enterprise [Big Business] in such a way as to deflect its course from the line of least resistance, which is the line of greatest present gain within the law.

Business | Character | Law | Life | Life | Present | Spirit | Business |

Daniel Webster

Knowledge does not comprise all which is contained in the large term of education. The feelings are to be disciplined; the passions are to be restrained; true and worthy motives are to be inspired; a profound religious feeling is to be instilled, and pure morality inculcated under all circumstances. All this is comprised in education.

Character | Circumstances | Education | Feelings | Knowledge | Morality | Motives |

John Barrymore

I have always been subconsciously embarrassed by the “function” of Christmas and New Years - the spirit of “loving kindness,” that is presumed to come to a head like a boil once a year, when it has been magnificently concealed up to that moment!

Kindness | Spirit | Wisdom |

James Ford Bell

Fear is an insidious virus. Given a breeding place in our minds, it will permeate the whole body of our work; it will eat away our spirit and block the forward path of our endeavors. Fear is the greatest enemy of progress... Fear is met and destroyed with courage.

Body | Courage | Enemy | Fear | Progress | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Work |