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

Maria Edgeworth

We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present; not only so, but, moreover, there is no moment at all, that is; no instant force and energy, but in the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards.

Character | Energy | Force | Future | Hope | Man | Present | Will |

John Dewey

To be being fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise; it surrounds the present like a halo.

Character | Future | Present | Promise |

Sara Davidson

The ability to laugh at life is right at the top, with love and communication in the hierarchy of our needs. Humor has much to do with pain; it exaggerates the anxieties and absurdities we feel, so that we gain distance and through laughter, relief.

Ability | Character | Humor | Laughter | Life | Life | Love | Pain | Right | Wisdom |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Life is very difficult. It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feelings; but then such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us - the ties that have made others depend on us - and would cut them in two.

Character | Feelings | Life | Life | Right | Wisdom |

Emil Fackenheim, fully Emil Ludwig Fackenheim

A life shot through with the tragedy of death is better - more human, more heroic - than a life of meaninglessness, even though pleasurable and comfortable.

Better | Character | Death | Life | Life | Tragedy |

Frederick Evan Crane

To make a man happy, fill his hands with work, his heart with affection, his mind with purpose, his memory with useful knowledge, his future with hope, and his stomach with food. The devil never enters a man except one of these rooms be vacant.

Character | Devil | Future | Happy | Heart | Hope | Knowledge | Man | Memory | Mind | Purpose | Purpose | Work |

Charles Alexander Eastman, first named Ohiyesa

The Indians were religious from the first moments of life. From the moment of the mother’s recognition that she had conceived to the end of the child’s second year of life, which was the ordinary duration of lactation, it was supposed by us that the mother’s spiritual influence was supremely important. Her attitude and secret meditations must be such to instill into the receptive soul of the unborn child the love of the Great Mystery and a sense of connectedness with all creation. Silence and isolation are the rule of life for the expectant mother... Silence, love, reverence - this is the trinity of first lessons, and to these she later adds generosity, courage and chastity.

Character | Chastity | Courage | Generosity | Important | Influence | Isolation | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Mystery | Reverence | Rule | Sense | Silence | Soul | Child |

Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler

Envy comes from focusing on the few moments of good fortune in the life of another person, while ignoring his years of misfortune.

Character | Envy | Fortune | Good | Life | Life | Misfortune |

Dubner Magid, name for Rabbi Jacob ben wolf Krantz

A person whose major goal in life is spiritual growth feels love for anyone who suggests ways he can improve.

Character | Growth | Life | Life | Love |

Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Wisdom |

Horatio W. Dresser

What I am thinking and doing day by day is resistlessly shaping my future - a future in which there is no expiation except through my own better conduct. No one can save me. No one can live my life for me. If I am wise I shall begin today to build my own truer and better world from within.

Better | Character | Conduct | Day | Future | Life | Life | Thinking | Wise | World |

James W. Elliot

Work is life and good work is good life.

Character | Good | Life | Life | Wisdom | Work |

Charles Curran

Life in this world is a very important reality, but it is not the ultimate reality... True growth in this world always calls for a dying to my own sinfulness, individualism and selfishness so that I might come closer to my true self in relationship to all others and to God. Thus, in the end, life and death are not diametrically opposed. Life involves a dying and dying is a way of life.

Character | Death | God | Growth | Important | Life | Life | Reality | Relationship | Self | Selfishness | World |

Henry Havelock Ellis

The tree of life is always in bloom somewhere if we only know where to look.

Character | Life | Life |

Euripedes NULL

A tongue without reins, definance, unwisdom - their end is disaster. But the life of quiet gfood, the wisdom that accepts - these abaide unshaken, preserving, sustaining the houses of men.

Character | Life | Life | Men | Quiet | Wisdom |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

On this earth all is temptation. Crosses tempt us by irritating our pride, and prosperity by flattering it. Our life is a continual combat... We must pass on unmoved, while temptations rage around us, as the traveler, overtaken by a storm, simply wraps his cloak more closely about him, and pushes on more vigorously toward his destined home.

Character | Earth | Life | Life | Pride | Prosperity | Rage | Temptation |