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

Book of Golden Precepts, aka The Book of Golden Precepts NULL

Inaction in a deed of mercy becomes an action in a deadly sin.

Action | Mercy | Sin |

Cato the Younger, formally Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis NULL

The greatest comfort of any old age, and that which gives me the highest satisfaction, is the pleasing remembrance of the many benefits and friendly offices I have done to others.

Age | Comfort | Old age | Old |

Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem in Israel NULL

Forgetfulness is the way to exile.  Remembrance is the way to redemption.

Forgetfulness | Redemption |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

By negligence and silence we have all become accessory before the God of mercy to the injustice committed against the Negroes by men of our nation.

God | Injustice | Injustice | Men | Mercy | Silence | God |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Beyond all mystery is the mercy of God.

God | Mercy | Mystery |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

Mercy |

Isidore of Seville, fully Saint Isidore of Seville NULL

Confession heals, confession justifies, confession grants pardon of sin. All hope consists in confession. In confession there is a chance for mercy. Believe it firmly. Do not doubt, do not hesitate, never despair of the mercy of God. Hope and have confidence in confession.

Chance | Confidence | Despair | Hope | Mercy | Pardon | Sin |

Thomas Merton

The saint… wants himself to be simply a window through which God’s mercy shines on the world. And for this he strives to be holy… in order that the goodness of God may never be obscured by any selfish act of his.

God | Mercy | Order | Wants | World | God |

Wayne Muller

To live a day, to care for a single day, is to shape a life. Each day is an opportunity to choose where to place our care. What shall we do today? What simple acts of remembrance will we use to punctuate our time and enrich our walk upon the earth this single day?

Care | Day | Earth | Life | Life | Opportunity | Time | Will |

Mozi or Mo-tze, Mocius or Mo-tzu, original name Mo Di, aka Master Mo NULL

Universal love… means that one makes no distinction between the state of others and one’s own; none between the houses of other and one’s own; none between the other person and oneself.

Distinction | Love | Means |

Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle

The Master responds to falsehood and truth, bad news and good news, inexactly the same way: “Is that so?” He allows the form of the moment, good or bad, to be as it is and so does not become a participant in human drama. To him there is only this moment, and this moment is as it is. Events are not personalized. He is nobody’s victim. He is so completely at one with what happens that what happens has no power over him anymore. Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.

Events | Falsehood | Good | Mercy | News | Power | Truth | Unhappiness | Will | World | Happiness |

John Greenleaf Whittier

We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave of text and legend. Reason’s voice and God’s, Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save justice and mercy and humility, a reasonable service of good deeds, pure living, tenderness to human needs, reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see the Master’s footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, but the calm beauty of an ordered life whose very breathing is unworded praise! A life that stands as all true lives have stood firm-rooted in the faith that God is good.

Beauty | Children | Deeds | Duty | Faith | Father | God | Good | Humility | Justice | Life | Life | Light | Mercy | Nature | Praise | Prayer | Reason | Reverence | Service | Tenderness | Trust | Beauty | God |

Ben Sira

In the day of prosperity there is a forgetfulness of affliction; and in the day of affliction there is no more remembrance of prosperity.

Affliction | Day | Forgetfulness | Prosperity |

Charles Caleb Colton

There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.

Chance | Cruelty | God | Humanity | Justice | Mercy | Merit | Motives | Service | Will | Cruelty | Value | Victim |

Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze

The essential and unbounded mercy of my Creator is the foundation of my hope, and a broader and surer the universe cannot give me.

Hope | Mercy | Universe |

Edward Gibbon

The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience, unsullied by the reproach of remembrance of an unworthy action.

Action | Conscience | Indispensable | Happiness |

Francis Bacon

The joys of parents are secret; and so are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one; nor they will not utter the other. Children sweeten labors; but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the cares of life; but they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity by generation is common to beasts; but memory, merit, and noble works are proper to men.

Children | Death | Life | Life | Memory | Men | Merit | Parents | Will |