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

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Deliverance is out of time into eternity, and is achieved by obedience and docility to the eternal Nature of Things. We have been given free will, in order that we may will our self-will out of existence and so come to live continuously in a “state of grace.” All our actions must be directed, in the last analysis, to making ourselves passive in relation to the activity and the being of divine Reality. We are, as it were, aeolian harps, endowed with the power either to expose themselves to the wind of the Spirit or to shut themselves away from it.

Character | Docility | Eternal | Eternity | Existence | Free will | Grace | Nature | Obedience | Order | Power | Reality | Self | Spirit | Time | Will |

Yosef Y. Hurwitz

An honor-seeker is not really interested in self-improvement. He is only interested in gaining approval from others. Hence, he will disregard any fault he has if he knows that others will not notice it. On the other hand, a person who is able to forego his honor is able to focus on truth. His only thought is to do the right thing and he is willing to sacrifice his honor for his principles. Such a person will eventually receive honor, for he will constantly work on improving himself.

Character | Fault | Focus | Honor | Improvement | Principles | Receive | Right | Sacrifice | Self | Self-improvement | Thought | Truth | Will | Work | Approval | Fault | Thought |

David Hume

The spirit of the people must frequently be roused, in order to curb the ambition of the court; and the dread of rousing this spirit must be employed to prevent that ambition. Nothing so effectual to this purpose as the liberty of the press; by which all the learning, wit, and genius of the nation, may be employed on the side of freedom, and every one be animated to its defense.

Ambition | Character | Defense | Dread | Freedom | Genius | Learning | Liberty | Nothing | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Spirit | Wit | Ambition |

William James

A thing is important if anyone think it important.

Character | Important | Think |

William James

So far as man stands for anything, and is productive or originative at all, his entire vital function may be said to have to deal with maybes. Not a victory is gained, not a deed of faithfulness or courage is done, except upon a maybe; not a service, not a sally of generosity, not a scientific exploration or experiment or textbook, that may not be a mistake. It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

Character | Courage | Enough | Experiment | Faith | Generosity | Man | Mistake | Service |

William James

The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is noninterference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.

Character | Happy | Learn |

Ikinilik NULL

The only thing of value in a man is the soul. That is why it is the soul that is given everlasting life, either in the Land of the Sky or in the Underworld. The soul is man’s greatest power; it is the soul that makes us human, but how it does so we do not know. Our flesh and blood, our body, is nothing but an envelope about our vital power.

Body | Character | Land | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Power | Soul | Value |

William James

Nature... is frugal in her operations and will not be at the expense of a particular instinct to give us that knowledge which experience and habit will soon produce. Reproduced sights and contacts tied together with the present sensation in the unity of a thing with a name, these are complex objective stuff out of which my actually perceived table is made. Infants must go through a long education of the eye and ear before they can perceive the realities which adults perceive. Every perception is an acquired perception.

Character | Education | Experience | Habit | Instinct | Knowledge | Nature | Perception | Present | Unity | Will |

Victor Hugo

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Character | Time | World |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Knowledge is a function of being; but the thing known is independent of the mode and nature of the knower.

Character | Knowledge | Nature |

William James

Fear of life is one form or other is the great thing to exorcise; but it isn’t reason that will ever do it. Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift. I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.

Character | Enough | Fear | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Reason | Suicide | Thought | Will | Thought |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

All relationship is based on the image that you have built around another and the other has built about you... What is relationship? If the image has come to an end, which is the content of consciousness that makes up your consciousness, when the various images you have about yourself, about everything, come to an end, then what is the relationship between you and her? Then is there an observer observing apart from the thing it has observed? Or is it a total movement of love in relationship? Are you getting it? So love is a movement in relationship in which the observer is not.

Character | Consciousness | Love | Relationship |

Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

It is a wretched thing to lean on the reputation of others, lest the pillars being withdrawn the roof should fall in ruins.

Character | Reputation |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

A man could not have anything upon his conscience if God did not exist, for the relationship between the individual and God, the God-relationship, is the conscience, and that is why it is so terrible to have even the least thing upon one’s conscience, because one is immediately conscious of the infinite weight of God.

Character | Conscience | God | Individual | Man | Relationship | God |

Charles Lamb

We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair.

Character | Spirit |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.

Character |

Sergei Kovalyov, also spelled Kovalev

I am here in order to fulfill the designs of my Creator as I understand them and to the best of my ability... Each one of us creates his own picture of the world, tortuously building an ideal in order to try to live in accordance with it. In that sense, there is no difference between a believer and an agnostic, since an ideal is something that, once raised, transcends man. Thus, we are here in order to “hoist our spirit without anchoring it upon anything,” as one of the ancient Chinese philosophers said. We must admit that that foundations are indeed shaky.

Ability | Agnostic | Character | Man | Order | Sense | Spirit | World | Understand |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going down on one's knees and thanking him.

Character | Existence | God |