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

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

When the sun is over your head, there will be no shadow; similarly, when faith is steady in your head, it should not cast any shadow of doubt.

Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Mind |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The mind is the instrument, the flywheel, and the thickest comrade of man. Through it, one can ruin oneself or save oneself. Regulated and controlled, channeled properly it can liberate; wayward and let loose, it can entangle and bind fast.

Mind | Will |

Yajur Veda, or Yajurveda

A man should tread on the path of truth for not only his own but for the benediction of entire humanity.

Body | Mind | Sound | Success |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

With seven wheels does this Time ride, seven naves has he, immortality is his axle. He carries hither all these beings (worlds). Time, the first god, now hastens onward.

Mind | Truth | Understand |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The Siblings of Destiny meet together, and eat and spend, but these resources do not diminish; they continue to increase.

Divinity | Love | Mind | Reason | Selfishness | Weakness |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

You win My love in full measure. Love is My highest Miracle. Love can make you gather the affection of all mankind. Love will not tolerate any selfish aim or approach, Love is God. Live in Love. Then all is right; all can be well.

Mind |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

I discover that hardly a week passes that someone does not start a new cult, or revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and liturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting.

Control | Freedom | Mind | Opinion | People | Present | Problems | Race |

Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in your heart.

Mind | Wise |

Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

We live in accordance with our deep, driving desire. It is this desire at the time of death that determines what our next life is to be. We will come back to earth to work out the satisfaction of that desire. But not for those who are free from desire; they are free because all their desires have found fulfillment in the Self. They do not die like the others; but realizing Brahman, they merge in Brahman. So it is said: When all the desires that surge in the heart are renounced, the mortal becomes immortal. When all the knots that strangle the heart are loosened, the mortal becomes immortal, here in this very life. – Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Deliberation | Mind | Deliberation |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

Wherever there was a group of people, and a treasure to be administered, there Peter knew was backbiting and scandal and intriguing and spying, and a chance for somebody whose brains were all there.

Day | Hero | Individual | Intelligence | Man | Mind | Science | Story | Think |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

Luxury | Man | Mind | Reward | Virtue | Virtue | Will |

Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

Vasana perishes through well conducted deliberation and truth. Through the absorption of Vasanas mind attains quiescence like a lamp without oil. - Mukti Upanishad

Memory | Mind | Purity |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

It was the incarnation of blind and insensate Greed. It was a monster devouring with a thousand mouths, trampling with a thousand hoofs it was the Great Butcher--it was the spirit of Capitalism made flesh.

Man | Mind |

Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

Where one sees another, one hears another, so long as there are two, there must be fear, and fear is the mother of all misery. Where none sees another, where it is all one, there is none to be miserable, none to be unhappy. – Chandogya Upanishad

Mind | Weakness | World |

V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

Most comic writers like to think they could play it straight if only their public would let them. Waugh is able to be grave without difficulty for he has always been comic for serious reasons. He has his own, almost romantic sense of propriety.

Awe | Imagination | Mind | Society | Society |

Vance Havner

We spend many an hour just talking when we should have been plowing.

Change | Mind |

Václav Havel

My dear fellow citizens: For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this day different variations of the same theme: how our country flourished, how many millions of tons of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how we trusted our government, and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us. I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you. . . We live in a contaminated moral environment. We have fallen morally ill because we became used to saying one thing and thinking another. We have learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only about ourselves. Notions such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depth and dimensions. . . The previous regime . . . reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine.

Doubt | Mind | Organization | Leadership |

Valmiki NULL

One who is angry does not distinguish between what can be spoken and what is unspeakable. There is nothing which an angry man cannot do meaning he can commit any crime. There is nothing unspeakable for him. Fire cannot act on fire.

Man | Melancholy | Mind |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

It is sad that goodness does not always accompany the force.

Esteem | Love | Mind |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

The mind is the soul's eye, not its source of power. That lies in the heart, in other words, in the passions.

Mind | Need |