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

Ernest Becker

The great boon of repression is that it makes it possible to live decisively in an overwhelmingly miraculous and incomprehensible world, a world so full of beauty, majesty, and terror that if animals perceived it all they would be paralyzed to act. ... What would the average man (sic) do with a full consciousness of absurdity? He has fashioned his character for the precise purpose of putting it between himself and the facts of life; it is his special tour-de-force that allows him to ignore incongruities, to nourish himself on impossibilities, to thrive on blindness. He accomplishes thereby a peculiarly human victory: the ability to be smug about terror.

Beginning | Courage | Death | Hero | Honor | Man | Nature | Terror | Thinkers | Valor | Valor |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

If your desire is strong enough, it doesn't matter what your beliefs are. If you have a desire that is strong enough, that desire will be the dominant vibration, and it will over-ride any other vibration that you have.

Law | Time | Will |

Ernest Shurtleff Holmes

We can no more do without spirituality than we can do without food, shelter, or clothing.

Cause | Law | Punishment |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

And where is yet farther proof of the truth of the theory of descent to be found?

Law | Nothing |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

It is, however, a most astonishing but incontestable fact, that the history of the evolution of man as yet constitutes no part of general education. Indeed, our so-called “educated classes" are to this day in total ignorance of the most important circumstances and the most remarkable phenomena which Anthropogeny has brought to light.

Better | Evolution | History | Honor | Struggle |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

We need but mention the mighty influence which irrational dogmas still exercise on the elementary education of our youth, we need but mention that the state yet permits the existence of cloisters and of celibacy, the most immoral and baneful ordinance of the “only-saving” church; we need but mention that the civilized state yet divides the most important parts of the civil year in accordance with church festivals; that in many countries it allows the public order to be disturbed by church processions, and so on.

Evolution | Law | Following |

Esaias Tegnér

Autumn has come; storming now heaveth the deep sea with foam, yet would I gratefully lie there, willingly die there.

Honor |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

The Universe does not know if the vibration you are offering is because of what you are imagining, or because of what you are observing.

Law | Thought | Think | Thought |

Estonian Proverbs

The man who can sharpen hundred stakes between two meals, can take a wife.

Law |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

The main event has never been the manifestation, the main event has always been the way you feel, moment by moment, because that's what life is.

Law |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

In love the other men, the man expands his thought.

Law |

Eugene Peterson

I haven't made that decision. But I would certainly welcome the superintendent of schools, instead of pointing the finger at everybody and everything, taking some accountability of what is happening on his watch.

Law | Will |

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts.

Honor | Society | Worship | Society |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The planet Venus, a circle of silver in a green sky, pierced the edge of the evening while the wintry woods darkened about me and in the stillness the regular sound of my footsteps striking the pavement was like a the rhythmic beating of a giant stone heart.

Experiment | Freedom | Law | Lesson | Order | Will | Work | Think |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.

Law |

Euripedes NULL

When one receives the generosity of the gods, do not need it to friends, as sufficient for divine help, if God willing!

Excess | Honor | Love | Man |

Euripedes NULL

Alas!-but why Alas? It is the lot of mortality we experience.

Justice | Law | Sorrow | Vengeance | Will |

Euripedes NULL

He is not a lover who does not love for ever.

Honor | Music | Repose |

Evelyn Underhill

If you have made a decision, and you still feel, taking it all in all, it was the right one, then don't look over your shoulder on what might have been. If it was wrong, ask for forgiveness and accept the present consequences, happily and without remorse. Nothing is more corrosive of the powers you should be using to meet the present.

Charity | Cost | Little | Love | Piety | World | Talent |