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

Deepak Chopra

Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment, are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your own evolution

Events | Evolution | Life | Life | Meaning | Need |

Deena Metzger

There are those who try to set fire to the world. We are in danger. There is only time to move slowly. There is no time not to love

Danger | Love | Time | World |

Edith Sitwell, fully Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.

Taste | Vice |

Emma Goldman

No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.

Education | Effort | Generosity | Kindness | Soul | Wealth |

Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for "life" instead of for "death."

Awareness | Choice | Individual | Knowledge | Man | Respect | Sincerity | Respect | Awareness |

Federico Fellini

Objects and their functions no longer had any significance. All I perceived was perception itself, the hell of forms and figures devoid of human emotion and detached from the reality of my unreal environment. I was an instrument in a virtual world that constantly renewed its own meaningless image in a living world that was itself perceived outside of nature. And since the appearance of things was no longer definitive but limitless, this paradisiacal awareness freed me from the reality external to myself. The fire and the rose, as it were, became one.

Appearance | Awareness | Hell | Perception | Reality | World | Awareness |

Felix Adler

The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. I am myself spiritually dead unless I reach out to the fine quality dormant in others. For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear.

God | Life | Life | Personality | Search | Unique | Will | God |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting.

Dispute | Life | Life | Taste |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Good | Rest | World |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

Taste |

Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.

Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo

Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.

Man |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Good | Rest | World |

Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Two things must be distinguished in consciousness; first, the fact that I know; secondly, what I know. In self consciousness these are merged in one; for Spirit knows itself. It involves an appreciation of its own nature, as also an energy enabling it to realise itself; to make itself actually that which it is potentially. According to this abstract definition it may be said of Universal History, that it is the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially. And as the germ bears in itself the whole nature of the tree, and the taste and form of its fruits, so do the first traces of Spirit virtually contain the whole of that History.

Abstract | Appreciation | Consciousness | Energy | Knowledge | Nature | Self | Spirit | Taste | Appreciation |

George S. Patton, fully George Smith Patton, Jr.

It is certain that the two World Wars in which I have participated would not have occurred had we been prepared. It is my belief that adequate preparation on our part would have prevented or materially shortened all our other wars beginning with that of 1812. Yet, after each of our wars, there has always been a great hue and cry to the effect that there will be no more wars, that disarmament is the sure road to health, happiness, and peace; and that by removing the fire department, we will remove fires. These ideas spring from wishful thinking and from the erroneous belief that wars result from logical processes. There is no logic in wars. They are produced by madmen. No man can say when future madmen will reappear. I do not say that there will be no more wars; I devoutly hope that there will not, but I do say that the chances of avoiding future wars will be greatly enhanced if we are ready.

Beginning | Belief | Future | Hope | Ideas | Logic | Man | Thinking | Will | World |