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

Lynn Hill, aka Lynn Hill-Raffa

The purpose of my existence as I climb is to adapt my personal dimensions to the environment around me at each moment. I become an active player sharing some of the responsibility for my own destiny, achieving a heightened sense of awareness and seeing the direct result of my efforts; either I fall or I reach the top. But the meaning does not come from conquering the rock. Purpose comes from moving in harmony with nature, rather than destroying it or altering it for my immediate satisfaction. What gives life meaning is the fulfillment of directing energy in a way that brings a higher order to, and harmony with, the environment I live in... The ultimate meaning of our lives is relative to how much we have given to others. The ultimate meaning of our lives is connected with death... I would like to know that I have inspired people to go beyond self-limiting stereotypes to experience and nurture the true richness of their passions.

Awareness | Character | Death | Destiny | Energy | Existence | Experience | Fulfillment | Harmony | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Self | Sense | Awareness |

Samuel Holdheim

It is only the attainment of the higher level of inner religious life which justifies an abandonment of our religious forms, that on a lower level are both a duty and a necessity.

Attainment | Character | Duty | Life | Life | Necessity |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.

Chance | Character | Folly | Good | Life | Life | Nothing | Rights | Sense | Wisdom |

Oscar Hammerstein II, fully Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hamerstein II

Why you are born and why you are living depend entirely on what you are getting out of this world and what you are giving to it. I cannot prove that this is a balance of mathematical perfection, but my own observation of life leads me to the conclusion that there is a very real relationship, both quantitatively and qualitatively, between what you contribute and what you get out of this world.

Balance | Character | Giving | Life | Life | Observation | Perfection | Relationship | World |

Bruce Herschensohn

Creativity always dies a quick death in rooms that house conference tables.

Character | Creativity | Death |

Thomas Hobbes

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Character | Desire | Fear | Life | Life | Mind | Sense | Tranquility |

Joel Hawes

A good name lost is seldom regained. When character is gone, all is gone, and one of the richest jewels of life is lost forever.

Character | Good | Life | Life |

Hierocles of Alexandria NULL

We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice.

Character | Evil | Fear |

Leigh Mitchell Hodges

Life begins each morning... Each night of life is a wall between to-day and the past. Each morning is the open door to a new world - new vistas, new aims, new tryings.

Aims | Character | Day | Life | Life | Past | World |

Gilbert L. Guffin

It is ever true that the life one lives speaks more loudly than the words one utters.

Character | Life | Life | Words |

William James

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact.

Belief | Character | Life | Life | Will | Worth | Afraid |

Thomas Hopko

We are here for communion with God who is Love, the One in whose image and likeness each one of us is made. We find this communion by loving as God loves us... The miracle of all miracles is the ability to transform through love the smallest, seemingly insignificant detail of the routine drudgery of everyday existence into paradise; the ability to become ourselves, at each moment, a fresh paradise to those around us, thereby becoming “gods by grace” for those who are “gods” to us. Each person accepts or rejects communion with God in his or her own unique manner... The act of communion comes always as grace. For those who know it, it is not life’s meaning, purpose or goal. It is life itself: God with us making us what God is.

Ability | Character | Existence | God | Grace | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Miracles | Paradise | Purpose | Purpose | Unique | God |

L. Ron Hubbard, fully Lafayette Ron Hubbard

Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today, and you make your tomorrow.

Character | Life | Life | Regret | Tomorrow |

Anna Jameson

In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

Beginning | Character | Ends | Evil | Fanaticism | Fear | Religion | Wickedness |

John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

What is your purpose? A purpose is something you discover. It's already there. It's always been there. You've lived your life by it, perhaps without fully realizing it... It is not a goal. A goal is something that can be reached. A purpose is a direction...A purpose is never achieved; it is fulfilled in each moment that you are "on purpose."... A purpose is not an affirmation. Affirmations can be created and used to make the creation real.

Character | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose |

Thomas Jefferson

Men are naturally divided into two parties: (1) those who fear and distrust the people... (2) those who identify themselves with people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider than as the most honest and safe.

Character | Confidence | Distrust | Fear | Men | People | Safe |

E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe

People tolerate those they fear further than those they love.

Character | Fear | Love | People |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

When, in our pain, we turn our attention to life’s purpose, we take up pain as a thread through the labyrinth... But when we deny pain, we are denying life itself. When we flee from pain that we cannot escape, we are fleeing from an opportunity to grow.

Attention | Character | Life | Life | Opportunity | Pain | Purpose | Purpose |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

If there is freedom... there is a spiritual Reality, which it is the final end and purpose of consciousness to know; then all life is in the nature of an intelligence test, and the higher the level of awareness and the greater the potentialities of the creature, the more searchingly difficult will be the questions asked.

Awareness | Character | Consciousness | Freedom | Intelligence | Life | Life | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Will | Awareness |