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

Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes

My only objection to the arrangements there is the two-in-a-bed system. It is bad.... But let your words and conduct be perfectly pure — such as your mother might know without bringing a blush to your cheek.... If not already mentioned, do not tell your mother of the doubling in bed.

Desire | Distinction | People | Policy | Regard | Will |

Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL

If the memory is annihilated, the devil is powerless, and it liberates us from a lot of sorrow, affliction and sadness.

Blessings | Desire | God | Heart | Knowledge | Means | Meditation | Noise | Nothing | Pleasure | Quiet | Sense | Silence | Soul | Spirit | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Work | God | Thought |

Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL

As God sets the soul in this dark night… He allows it not to find attraction or sweetness in anything whatsoever. God transfers to the spirit the good things and the strength of the senses… if it is not immediately conscious of spiritual sweetness and delight, but only of aridity and lack of sweetness, the reason for this is the strangeness of the exchange. #6. If those souls to whom this comes to pass knew how to be quiet at this time… then they would delicately experience this inward refreshment in that ease and freedom from care… it is like the air which, if one would close one’s hand upon it, escapes. In this state of contemplation… it is God Who is now working in the soul. He binds its interior faculties, and allows it not to cling to the understanding, nor to have delight in the will, nor to reason with the memory. God communicates… by pure spirit. From this time forward imagination and fancy can find no support in any meditation.

Contemplation | Darkness | Faith | God | Grace | Heart | Love | Meditation | Noise | Order | Pleasure | Practice | Progress | Rest | Sense | Silence | Solitude | Soul | Thought | Understanding | Will | God | Contemplation | Obstacle | Thought |

Saint Basil, aka Basil of Caesarea, Saint Basil the Great NULL

Do not measure your loss by itself; if you do, it will seem intolerable; but if you will take all human affairs into account you will find that some comfort is to be derived from them.

Distinction | Woman | Guilty |

Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

What is evil unless it is the absence of good?

Distinction | God | Man | God |

Saint Francis de Sales NULL

All the good we do, we do for love of God, and the evil we avoid, we avoid for love of God.

Action | God | Meditation | Nothing | Order | Study | Understanding | God |

Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

I receive Thee ransom of my soul. For love of Thee have I studied and kept vigil toiled preached and taught.

Distinction | Influence | Life | Life | Man | Means | Power | Reason | Scripture | Time | Woman | Work |

Saint Vincent de Paul

I hope that this man can be won over by your bearing charitably with him, advising him prudently, and praying for him. This is what I do for your family in general and for you in particular.

Distinction | Order | Vows |

Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought.

Distinction | Envy |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

But it is evident, that these bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than felt; thousands and ten thousands flourish in youth, and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domestic evils, and share the same pleasures and vexa?tions, whether their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country pursue their enemies or retreat before them.

Distinction | Virtue | Virtue | Think |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

If lawyers were to undertake no causes till they were sure they were just, a man might be precluded altogether from a trial of his claim, though, were it judicially examined, it might be found a very just claim.

Distinction | Virtue | Virtue | Think |

Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL

Therefore we have to engage ourselves in occupational engagements that will evoke our divine consciousness. This is possible only by hearing and chanting the divine activities of the Supreme Lord…

Intelligence | Lord | Meditation | Mind | Progress |

Shvetashvatara Upanishad

The Self, smaller than the small, greater than the great, is hidden in the hearts of creatures. The wise, by the grace of the Creator, behold the Lord, majestic and desireless and become free from grief.

Lord | Meditation | Self |

Shvetashvatara Upanishad

Rudra is truly one; for the knowers of Brahman do not admit the existence of a second, He alone rules all the worlds by His powers. He dwells as the inner Self of every living being. After having created all the worlds, He, their Protector, takes them back into Himself at the end of time.

Illusion | Individual | Knowledge | Meditation | Self |

Shvetashvatara Upanishad

When there is no darkness of ignorance, there is no day or night, neither being nor non-being; the pure Brahman alone exists. That immutable Reality is the meaning of "That"; It is adored by the Sun. From It has proceeded the ancient wisdom.

Birth | Death | Lord | Meditation |

Shvetashvatara Upanishad

In the Immutable, infinite Supreme Brahman remain hidden the two: knowledge and ignorance. Ignorance leads to worldliness and knowledge, to Immortality. Brahman, who controls both knowledge and ignorance, is different from both.

Meditation |

Simone Weil

Men ... ask nothing better, it would seem, than to leave their destiny, their life, and all their thoughts in the hands of a few men with a gift for the exclusive manipulation of this or that technique.

Chance | Father | Meditation | Mother |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Man found that he was faced with the acceptance of "spiritual" forces, that is to say such forces as cannot be comprehended by the senses, particularly not by sight, and yet having undoubted, even extremely strong, effects. If we may trust to language, it was the movement of the air that provided the image of spirituality, since the spirit borrows its name from the breath of wind (animus, spiritus, Hebrew: ruach = smoke). The idea of the soul was thus born as the spiritual principle in the individual ... Now the realm of spirits had opened for man, and he was ready to endow everything in nature with the soul he had discovered in himself.

Body | Consciousness | Contemplation | Death | Distinction | Evil | Existence | Future | Grief | Guilt | Individual | Life | Life | Thought | Contemplation | Thought |

Stephan Bodian

Let go of old habit patterns that keep you trapped in dissatisfaction and frustration

Attention | Behavior | Meditation | People | Thought | Friends | Thought |

Stephen Charnock

Man witnesseth to a God in the operations and reflections of conscience. Their thoughts are accusing or excusing. An inward comfort attends good actions, and an inward torment follows bad ones; for there is in every man’s conscience fear of punishment and hope of reward: there is, therefore, a sense of some superior judge, which hath the power both of rewarding and punishing. If man were his supreme rule, what need he fear punishment, since no man would inflict any evil or torment on himself; nor can any man be said to reward himself, for all rewards refer to another, to whom the action is pleasing, and is a conferring some good a man had not before; if an action be done by a subject or servant, with hopes of reward, it cannot be imagined that he expects a reward from himself, but from the prince or person whom he eyes in that action, and for whose sake he doth it.

Action | Distinction | Distinguish | Evil | Good | Law | Man | Men | Practice | Praise | Principles | Rebuke | Rule | Will |