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

E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White

I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn’t have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born upright. The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out what the score is.

Beauty | Free press | Man | Order | Wisdom | Writing | Beauty |

Gaius Glenn Atkins

The constants in all religion are the mystery of the universe, the nostalgia of the human spirit for an order beyond the show and flux of things to which it believes itself akin, and the belief that it has evidence of such an order.

Belief | Evidence | Mystery | Order | Religion | Spirit | Universe |

John Elof Boodin

At best God can only reveal himself to us in terms of our experience in our historic setting. And the revelation that comes to us is to cooperate with God to bring form and order into the world as it is.

Experience | God | Order | Revelation | World | God |

Carl Zimmerer

Only mushrooms can grow in the shadow of mighty trees, but shrubs need light in order to grow. If you recognize your father is a tree, you should move away and out of his shadow.

Father | Light | Need | Order | Wisdom |

Simon Wiesenthal

The meaning of life is wrapped up in what will remain after we depart. The meaning of life is to help create a better future... The meaning of life is to be mindful of the past - to always remember - in order to make certain that history’s atrocities are not repeated again and that justice will win.

Better | Future | History | Justice | Life | Life | Meaning | Order | Past | Will | Wisdom |

Julian Baggini

A goal-oriented life locates the purposed of life in the achievement of a goal, which is necessarily tied to a discrete moment in time… But we also exist across time, and when our life’s goals are fixed so narrowly on moments that are only briefly the present, we fail to do justice to the enduring aspect of human life… Moments slip away and so if life’s purpose is tied to moments. Although moments can play a part, in order to find a purpose which is truly fulfilling, we also need to find a way of living which is worthwhile in itself. Life is rarely an undiluted pleasure that our own attitudes are themselves important to our sense of well-being.

Achievement | Goals | Important | Justice | Life | Life | Need | Order | Play | Pleasure | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Time |

Peter A. Bertocci, fully Peter Anthony Bertocci

The sexual act takes on qualitative significance and value which transcends the other meanings the sexual act can have, when lovers use the act purposely to become parents. For now the two lovers express their faith in love itself, in the possibilities open to their children within the social order and in this world.

Children | Faith | Love | Order | Parents | World | Value |

Edward Scribner Ames

At last religion has come to reckon with the fact that its highest quest is not for a supernatural order but just for natural goodness in the largest and fullest measure.

Order | Religion |

Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine NULL

To administer medicine to diseases which have already developed and thereby suppress bodily chaos which has already occurred is comparable to the behavior of those who would begin to dig a well after they have grown thirsty, or those who would begin to cast weapons after they have engaged in battle.

Battle | Behavior | Weapons | Wisdom |

James Luther Adams

In its purest form music is not a representational but rather a nonobjective, nonverbal world, it is a world of its own, almost a creatio ex hihilo, an occasion for immediacy of experience, a nonreducible mode of beauty, of contrast and resolution, of order and ecstasy flowing through and beyond the order. Order, and ecstasy rooted in order: that sounds like the relation between law and love, law and gospel.

Beauty | Contrast | Ecstasy | Experience | Law | Love | Music | Order | Resolution | World |

Anselm of Canterbury, aka Saint Anselm or Archbishop of Canterbury NULL

I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand.

Order | Understand |

Henri Frédéric Amiel

The eternal truth is not the future life; it is life in harmony with the true order of things - life in God.

Eternal | Future | God | Harmony | Life | Life | Order | Truth |

Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, simply known as Ali NULL

A man’s behavior is the index of the man, and his discourse is the index of his understanding.

Behavior | Man | Understanding |

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

He produces not only our choice, but also the very freedom that is in our chance... In order to understand that God creates our free will in us, we must understand only that He wills us to be free. But He will not only that we should be free in power, but that we should be free in its exercise.

Chance | Choice | Free will | Freedom | God | Order | Power | Will | Wills | God | Understand |

Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

Courage | Life | Life | Little | Man | Order | Paradox |

Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron

It is necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to a microbe; it is not necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to men.

Justice | Man | Men | Order |