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

Alexander Pope

All nature is but art, unknown to thee; all chance, direction, which thou canst not see; all discord harmony, not understood; all partial evil, universal good: and, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, one truth is clear, “Whatever is, is Right.”

Art | Chance | Evil | Good | Harmony | Nature | Pride | Reason | Right | Truth | Wisdom |

José Enrique Rodó, fully José Enrique Rodó Piñeyro

Every society to which you remain bound robs you of a part of your essence, and replaces it with a speck of the gigantic personality which is its own.

Personality | Society | Wisdom | Society |

Publius Syrus

The loss which is unknown is no loss at all.

Wisdom | Loss |

J. B. Rhine, fully Joseph Banks Rhine

If parapsychology deals with all the personality manifestations that are beyond explanation by physics, then by definition it should claim the entire spiritual order of reality.

Order | Personality | Reality | Wisdom |

John Welwood

We do not have to hold on to our identity to survive... We see that no states of mind are solid; they only become solid when we weave them into a story. We discover that opening to the vast open space of awareness does not destroy us. We learn to trust in the unknown as a guide to what is most fresh and alive in the moment.

Awareness | Destroy | Mind | Space | Story | Trust | Wisdom | Awareness | Learn |

UNESCO Constitution NULL

Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defense of peace must be constructed.

Defense | Men | Peace | Wisdom |

Daniel Amen

The sum of our memories and experiences is responsible for our sense of identity and connectedness to those around us, as well as our character.

Character | Sense |

Carol Adrienne

Karma is a multidimensional complex of forces beyond any simple explanation. Karma is action. An action has consequences. Our identity comes from past actions, which create memories. Those memories create desires, which give rise to new choices and new actions.

Action | Consequences | Past |

Terri Apter

One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity – not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification of the range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses, and justify our decisions and goals.

Adolescence | Goals | Justify | Knowledge | Self | Sense |

Helena Blavatsky, aka Helena Petrovna "H.P." Blavatsky or Madame Blavatsky, born Helena von Hahn

We must prepare and study truth under every aspect, endeavoring to ignore nothing, if we do not wish to fall into the abyss of the unknown when the hour shall strike.

Nothing | Study | Truth |

J. A. C. Brown, fully James Alexander Campbell Brown

Communism and Fascism or Nazism although poles apart in their intellectual content are similar in this, that both have emotional appeal to the type of personality that takes pleasure in being submerged in a mass movement and submitting to superior authority.

Authority | Personality | Pleasure |

Phillips Brooks

You must ask yourself first, what God is. You must see how at the very bottom of His existence, as you conceive of it, lie these two thoughts – purpose and righteousness; how absolutely impossible it is to give God any personality except as the fulfillment of these two qualities – the intelligence that plans in love, and the righteousness that lives in duty.

Duty | Existence | Fulfillment | God | Intelligence | Love | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | Qualities | Righteousness | God |

Pierre Charles

The Christian who prays recollects himself, that is to say he discovers himself, gathers himself together, frees himself from all useless masters, from all unknown hands, from all fast-holding desires which tear him to pieces and so prevent him from being himself.

Hermann Cohen

Man strives for reconciliation with God – could he aspire to anything higher? Since identity with God is a paradoxical notion, reconciliation with Him remains man’s only goal because it represents no less than his redemption from the conflicting forces within his own nature.

God | Man | Nature | Reconciliation | Redemption | God |

L. Francis Edmunds

The search for final truth rests with each individual personality and rendering the partial interpretations of our experience fundamentally consistent with one another. It is this fact that justifies the use of the word `God’ to designate the all embracing personality in whose existence ultimate reality exists.

Existence | Experience | God | Individual | Personality | Reality | Search | Truth |

L. Francis Edmunds

What is important and of greatest significance is that an ideal of final truth is always before use and that the search for truth is acknowledged by all men as a duty not imposed from outside but born from within. The search for final truth rests with each individual personality and rendering the partial interpretations of our experience fundamentally consistent with one another. It is this fact that justifies the use of the word `God’ to designate the all embracing personality in whose existence ultimate reality exists.

Duty | Existence | Experience | God | Important | Individual | Men | Personality | Reality | Search | Truth |