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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

Better | Education | Envy | Good | Ignorance | Imitation | Man | Nature | Power | Suicide | Time | Universe |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is a piece of the universe made alive.

Man | Universe |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they are called cause, operation and effect; or more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or theologically, the Father, the Spirit and the Son; but we will call the Knower, the Doer and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and the love of beauty. These three are equal. The poets are thus liberating gods. They are free and they make free.

Beauty | Cause | Children | Father | Good | Love | Spirit | System | Thought | Time | Truth | Universe | Will |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation. Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. "It is in the world, and the world was made by it." Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. The dice of God are always loaded.

Balance | Doctrine | Equity | Evil | Force | God | Good | History | Inspiration | Justice | Law | Life | Life | Omnipresence | Sentiment | Soul | Strength | Universe | World | God | Value |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are few fixtures in nature, The universe is fluid and volatile.

Nature | Universe |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing in the universe so solid as a thought.

Nothing | Thought | Universe |

Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman

I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that may be wrong. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose.

Knowing | Purpose | Purpose | Universe | Wrong | Think |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts.

God | Law | Universe | God |

Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

The space of a needle's eye suffices for two friends, while the universe itself is not wide enough for two enemies.

Enough | Space | Universe |

Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton

The highest endowments do not create - they only discover. All transcendent genius has the power to make us know this as utter truth. Shakespeare, Bethoveen - it is inconceivable that they have fashioned the works of their lives; they only saw and heard the universe that is opaque and dumb to us.

Genius | Power | Truth | Universe |

Arthur Eddington, fully Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

The already observed universe should contain at least a billion billion places that can support life.

Life | Life | Universe |

Sosan Zenji, aka Chien-chih Seng-Tsan or Ch'an Seng-ts'an

Emptiness here, Emptiness thee, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes. Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen. So too with Being and Non-Being. Don’t waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this.

Nothing | Time | Universe | Waste |

Talmud or The Talmud NULL

God fills the universe just as the soul fills the body of man.

Body | God | Man | Soul | Universe |

Teilhard de Chardin, fully Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

… presented a vision of the universe progressing towards a goal, the spiritual development of humanity… noosphere – the mind’s capacity to know itself.

Capacity | Humanity | Mind | Universe | Vision |

Mahabharata or The Mahabharata NULL

One should forgive, under any injury. It hath been said that the continuation of the species is due to man’s being forgiving. Forgiveness is holiness; by forgiveness the universe is held together. Forgiveness is the might of the mighty; forgiveness is sacrifice; forgiveness is the might of the mighty; forgiveness is sacrifice; forgiveness is quiet of mind. Forgiveness and gentleness are the qualities of the Self-possessed. They represent eternal virtue.

Eternal | Forgiveness | Gentleness | Man | Mind | Qualities | Quiet | Sacrifice | Self | Universe | Virtue | Virtue | Forgiveness |

Thomas Carlyle

The Universe is but one vast symbol of God.

God | Universe |

Thomas Carlyle

The illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then are not: this is forever very literally a miracle; a thing to strike us dumb.

Time | Universe |

Thomas Carlyle

We quietly believe this Universe to be intrinsically a great, unintelligible Perhaps.

Universe |