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

Nikita Ivanovich Panin

To be forbearing to all - that is love; to be relentless toward self - that is wisdom; to be content with what one has - that is riches; to be discontented with what one is - that is piety.

Character | Love | Piety | Riches | Self | Wisdom |

Plotinus NULL

It is sound, I think, to find the primal source of Love in a tendency of the Soul towards pure beauty, in a recognition, in a kinship, in an unreasoned consciousness of friendly relation.

Beauty | Character | Consciousness | Love | Soul | Sound |

Richardson Pack or Packe

There is nothing a man can less afford to leave at home than his conscience or his good habits; for it is not to be denied that travel is, in its immediate circumstances, unfavorable to habits of self-discipline, regulation of thought, sobriety of conduct, and dignity of character. Indeed, one of the great lessons of travel is the discovery how much our virtues owe to the support of constant occupation, to the influence of public opinion, and to the force of habit; a discovery very dangerous, if it proceed from an actual yielding to temptations resisted at home, and not from a consciousness of increased power put forth in withstanding them.

Character | Circumstances | Conduct | Conscience | Consciousness | Dignity | Discipline | Discovery | Force | Good | Habit | Influence | Man | Nothing | Occupation | Opinion | Power | Public | Regulation | Self | Thought | Yielding | Discovery |

Nisargadatta Maharaj, fully Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, born Maruti Shivrampant Kambli

By watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.

Acceptance | Attention | Awareness | Character | Consciousness | Freedom | Intelligence | Intention | Life | Life | Mind | Mother | Nature | Understanding | Work | Understand |

Tatjana Patitz

I believe that being true to the self is the most important thing in life - to have a free heart, a pure soul and a pure mind. We all live, or should live, for the fulfillment of the self. We are all mirror images of each other; whatever we feel in ourselves we feel in others. I believe that we create our own lives... Intuition should play the main role in everything we do. Through the creative source of the mind and the unlimited power of the spirit all our deepest wishes come true. For me the meaning is that we are all one, and the only true reality is the spirit. Believing in the power of spirit is simply to have a passion for life, to learn, to grow, to evolve and most of all to love, and live each day and each moment of the day to the fullest.

Character | Day | Fulfillment | Heart | Important | Intuition | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mind | Passion | Play | Power | Reality | Self | Soul | Spirit | Wishes |

Bachya Ibn Pekudah

The goal to strive for is that it should be equal in your eyes if others happen to praise or insult you.

Character | Insult | Praise | Insult |

Plotinus NULL

The pinions of your soul will have power to still the untamed body. The creature will yield only to watchful, strenuous constancy of habit. Purify your soul from all undue hope and fear about earthly things, mortify the body, deny self - affections as well as appetites - and the inner eye will begin to exercise its clear and solemn vision.

Body | Character | Constancy | Fear | Habit | Hope | Power | Self | Soul | Vision | Will |

Alexander Pope

To be angry is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.

Character | Fault | Revenge | Fault |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Do to others as you would have them do unto you, inspires all men with that other maxim of natural goodness, much less perfect indeed, but perhaps more useful: Do good to yourself with as little evil as possible to others.

Character | Evil | Good | Little | Men |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wise, more liberated and luminous state of being. Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit to it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy.

Character | Ecstasy | Evolution | Force | Mission | Mystical | Purpose | Purpose | Wise |

Grady Poulard

The measure of a man is not determined by his show of outward strength or the volume of his voice or the thunder of his action. It is to be seen rather in terms of the strength of his inner self in terms of the nature and depth of his commitments the sincerity of his purpose and his willingness to continue "growing up."

Action | Character | Man | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Sincerity | Strength |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The hatred of the wicked is only roused the more from the impossibility of finding any just grounds on which it rest; and the very consciousness of their own injustice is only a grievance the more against him who is the object of it.

Character | Consciousness | Impossibility | Injustice | Injustice | Object | Rest |

Publius Syrus

Expect to be treated by others as you treat others.

Character |