Great Throughts Treasury

"Without our knowing it, we see reality through glasses colored by the subconscious memory of previous experiences." - Thomas Merton

"Self-respect cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when we suddenly realize that knowing the good, we have gone for the great." - James A. Michener, fully James Albert Michener

"The sublimity of administration consists in knowing the proper degree of power that should be exerted on different occasions." - Charles De Montesquieu, formally Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

"Four simple questions have shaped the spiritual journeys of pilgrims and seekers for thousands of years. These questions enable us to gently awaken the four fundamental realms of inner life: Identity, Love, Daily Practice, and Kindness. (1) Who am I? We have within us an essential nature that is whole and unbroken. (2) What do I love? (3) How shall I live, knowing I will die? Every moment of life is a precious gift. (4) What is my gift to the family of the earth?" - Wayne Muller

"Freedom is not choosing; that is merely the move that we make when all is already lost. Freedom is knowing and understanding and respecting things quite other than ourselves." - Iris Murdoch, aka Dame Jean Iris Murdoch

"No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right, and when he sees it is not, the prejudice will be gone." - Thomas Paine

"We, undisciplined in discernment of the inward, knowing nothing of it, run after the outer, never understanding that it is the inner which stirs us; we are [like] one who sees his own reflection but not realizing whence it comes goes in pursuit of it." -

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." - Gilda Radner, fully Gilda Susan Radner

"The deeper we search, the nearer we arrive at knowing that we do not know." - Fritz A. Rothschild

"To study Torah is to touch the mind of God, so study becomes an act not only of knowing God but of devotion to God, and as such it is the most intimate form of love. On the other hand, in practice Torah is embodied in everyday life which is imbued with sacredness through ritualization… both these dimensions of study and ritual Torah is said to increase life, enriching and filling it with meaning, and quite literally lengthening it." - Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin

"The art of policy is knowing when to act, how to act, through whom to act, with what tools to act, and for what purposes to act." - Dean Rusk, fully David Dean Rusk

"The special glory of being human is precisely that we have choices. The special sadness lies in knowing there is a limit to how right our choices can be, and a limit to how much the rightness of our choices can matter." - David Schmidtz

"Human nature is directed at an open-ended, endless, in-finite, all-embracing, comprehensive knowing and loving and knowing freely acting." - Leonard Swindler

"Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power." -

"Knowing yourself has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind. Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind." - Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle

"A jealous person is doubly unhappy - over what he has, which is judged inferior, and over what he has not, which is judged superior. Such a person is doubly removed from knowing the true blessings of creation." - Desmond Tutu, fully Desmond Mpilo Tutu

"Above the senses is the mind. Above the mind is the intellect. Above the intellect is the ego. Above the ego is the unmanifested seed, the Primal Cause. And verily beyond the unmanifested seed is the self, the unconditioned Knowing whom one attains to freedom and achieves immortality." - Katha Upanishad

"By knowing God one is released from all fetters." - Shvetashvatara Upanishad

"Love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness." - Jean Vanier

"Man is simply here; he has to make what he can of a universe that is not even hostile but strange and uncertain. Man is never given a purpose or mission; he must devise them for himself, knowing that their fulfillment has no external justification or reward - altogether and absurd situation." - Jacques Barzun, fully Jacques Martin Barzun

"Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence." -

"Knowing is not enough; We must apply. Willing is not enough; We must do." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage." - Benito Juárez , born Benito Pablo Juárez García

"Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, Love is knowing I am everything, and between the two my life moves." -

"The modern era, dedicated to repeatable experimental data, buried something valuable that cannot be resurrected by scientific language: namely, the qualities of knowing that rely on unification between an observer and the object observed." - Helen Palmer

"Try trusting that love is in our genetic code, that we are meant for it, and that it is our ultimate source of wisdom. It involves surrendering to not knowing while hungering to know. And perhaps this reconnection to what matters - through nature, human relationships, and the sacred dimension in life - will be the true source of power that takes us from here to there." - Betsy Taylor

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught." -

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap into the dark." -

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." -

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." -

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap into the dark." -

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." -

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." -

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." - Agnes George de Mille

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap into the dark." -

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." -

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." -

"Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful; yourself." - Alan Alda, born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo

"Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful; yourself." -

"Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful; yourself." -

"More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheeps or goats that nourish a blind life within the brain, if, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way bound by gold chains about the feet of God." -

"Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because while mind in this sense is impassable, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks." - Aristotle NULL

"Knowing what is right does not make a sagacious man." - Aristotle NULL

"The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worth-while to live." - Aristotle NULL

"The better part of maturity is knowing your goals." -

"Unhappiness lies in not knowing what we want out of life and killing ourselves to get it." - Author Unknown NULL

"True commitment begins when we reach the point of not knowing how we can possibly go on, and decide to do it anyway." - Author Unknown NULL

"Smart is believing half of what you hear, brilliant is knowing which half to believe." - Author Unknown NULL

"The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

"Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield