Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Mortal

"This very essence of a man, his soul, which the artist puts into his work and which is represented by it, is found again in the work by the enjoyer, just as the believer finds his soul in religion or in God, with whom he feels himself to be one. It is on this identity of the spiritual, which underlies the concept of collective religion, and not on a psychological identification with the artist, that the pleasurable effect of the work of art ultimately depends, and the effect is, in this sense, one of deliverance….But both [artist and enjoyer], in the simultaneous dissolution of their individuality in a greater whole, enjoy, as a high pleasure, the personal enrichment of that individuality through this feeling of oneness. They have yielded up their mortal ego for a moment, fearlessly and even joyfully, to receive it back in the next, the richer for this universal feeling. " - Otto Rank, born Otto Rosenfeld

"We have Divine Wisdom in the mortal body.Whatever does harm to the body, ruins the House of the Eternal." - Paracelsus, aka 'Paracelsus the Great', born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim NULL

"A mortal lives not through that breath that flows in and that flows out. The source of his life is another and this causes the breath to flow." - Paracelsus, aka 'Paracelsus the Great', born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim NULL

"Each soul must find his way back alone. No one but you is responsible for your mistakes and habits. Once you have found your Self in your soul, you are free. But so long as you are not free, so long is there danger; you will have to come back and work out all the desires that remain unfinished. Your body is mortal but the soul outlasts the body." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Life seems such a tangible reality, and yet it is elusive. Every minute is precious. Today you are; tomorrow you are not. I remind myself of this every day. One by one we slip away. Others will come and we shall go. But the body is only a garment. How many times you have changed your clothing in this life, yet because of this you would not say that you have changed. Similarly, when you give up this bodily dress at death you do not change. You are just the same, an immortal soul, a child of God. Reincarnation means merely a change of mortal dress. But your real self will never change. You must concentrate on your real self, not on the body, which is nothing but a garment." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Meditation must be practiced every day. Start now! Do not look to the future. Begin this very moment to think of God. In this thought you are a king. Why be a prisoner of mortal moods and habits? To carry out one's resolutions is a constant battle. Never give up your good resolutions." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"When you realize yourself as a child of God, what karma have you? God has no karma. And you have none, when you know you are His child. Every day you should affirm, "I am not a mortal being; I am not the body. I am a child of God."" - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Not an unconscious state Or mental chloroform without wilful return, Samadhi but extends my realm of consciousness Beyond the limits of my mortal frame To the boundaries of eternity, Where I, the Cosmic Sea, Watch the little ego floating in Me." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"I, the ocean of mind, drink all creation’s waves. The four veils of solid, liquid, vapor, light, Lift aright. Myself, in everything, Enters the Great Myself. Gone forever, The fitful, flickering shadows of a mortal memory. Spotless is my mental sky, Below, ahead, and high above. Eternity and I, one united ray. I, a tiny bubble of laughter, Have become the Sea of Mirth Itself." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"If we are honest — and scientists have to be — we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards — in heaven if not on earth — all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins." - Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac

"Every fanatic or enemy of virtue is not at liberty to misrepresent the greatest geniuses and most heroic defenders of all that is valuable in this mortal world. History, to gain any credit, must contain some truth, and that truth shall thus be made a sufficient indication of prejudice and deceit." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"To-morrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform, and mortal men lay hold on heaven." - Persius, fully Aulus Persius Flaccus NULL

"The air is full of souls those who are nearest to earth descending to be tied to mortal bodies return to other bodies, desiring to live in them. " - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

"Ah, there are moments for us here, when, seeing Life’s inequalities, and woe, and care, The burdens laid upon our mortal being Seem heavier than the human heart can bear. Father, perfect my trust; Let my spirit feel in death That her feet are firmly set On the rock of a living faith! For little children everywhere A joyous season still we make; We bring our precious gifts to them, Even for the dear child Jesus’ sake. For those roses bright, oh, those roses bright! I have twined them in my sister’s locks That are hid in the dust from sight. No thought within her bosom stirs, But wakes some feeling dark and dread; God keep thee from a doom like hers, Of living when the hopes are dead. O years, gone down into the past, What pleasant memories come to me Of your untroubled days of peace, And hours almost of ecstasy. There are eyes half defiant, Half meek and compliant; Black eyes, with a wondrous, witching charm To bring us good or to work us harm. Women are only told that they resemble angels when they are young and beautiful; consequently, it is their persons, not their virtues, that procure them homage." - Phoebe Cary

"Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is truth-seeker. My mission is written in these words of the law: Speak without hatred and without fear; tell that which thou knowest! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him?" - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"The religion of the Sufi is not separate from the religions of the world. People have fought in vain about the names and lives of their saviors, and have named their religions after the name of their savior, instead of uniting with each other in the truth that is taught. This truth can be traced in all religions, whether one community calls another pagan or infidel or heathen. Such persons claim that theirs is the only scripture, and their place of worship the only abode of God. Sufism is a name applied to a certain philosophy by those who do not accept the philosophy; hence it cannot really be described as a religion; it contains a religion but is not itself a religion. Sufism is a religion if one wishes to learn religion from it. But it is beyond religion, for it is the light, the sustenance of every soul, raising the mortal being to immortality." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may." - Plato NULL

"When a man is laboring under the pain of any distemper, it is then that he recollects there are gods, and that he himself is but a man; no mortal is then the object of his envy, his admiration, or his contempt, and having no malice to gratify, the tales of slander excite not his attention." - Pliny the Younger, full name Casus Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo NULL

"Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?… It is certainly not lions and wolves that we eat out of self-defense; on the contrary, we ignore these and slaughter harmless, tame creatures without stings or teeth to harm us, creatures that, I swear, Nature appears to have produced for the sake of their beauty and grace. But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tinting of the flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence that may be found in the poor wretches. No, for the sake of a little flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life to which they are entitled by birth and being. " - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

"My peace, O my brothers and sisters, is my solitude, And my Beloved is with me always, For His love I can find no substitute, And His love is the test for me among mortal beings. Whenever His Beauty I may contemplate He is my "mihrab", towards Him is my "qiblah" If I die of love, before completing satisfaction Alas, for my anxiety in the world, alas for my distress, O Healer (of souls) the heart feeds upon its desire, The striving after union with Thee has healed my soul, O my Joy and my Life abidingly You were the source of my life and from Thee also came my ecstasy. I have separated myself from all created beings, My hope is for union with Thee, for that is the goal of my desire. " - Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya al-Qaysiyya, aka Rabi'a of Basra or Basri, Saint Rabia of Basra

"Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps: silence of paintings. You language where all language ends. You time standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts. Feelings for whom? O you the transformation of feelings into what?--: into audible landscape. You stranger: music. You heart-space grown out of us. The deepest space in us, which, rising above us, forces its way out,-- holy departure: when the innermost point in us stands outside, as the most practiced distance, as the other side of the air: pure, boundless, no longer habitable." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke

"Leave off losings, and take on winnings, Erase all mortal ends, give birth to only new beginnings, In a billion years of morning and a billion years of sleep." - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury

"The men whom I have seen succeed best in life always have been cheerful and hopeful men; who went about their business with a smile on their faces; and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men; facing rough and smooth alike as it came." - Charles Kingsley

"Ye holy angels bright, Who wait at God's right hand, Or through the realms of light Fly at your Lord's command, Assist our song; For else the theme Too high doth seem For mortal tongue. Ye blessed souls at rest, Who ran this earthly race, And now, from sin released, Behold the Saviour's face, God's praises sound, As in his sight, With sweet delight, Ye do abound. Ye saints, who toil below, Adore your heavenly King. And onward as ye go Some joyful anthem sing; Take what he gives And praise him still, Through good or ill, Who ever lives! My soul, bear thou thy part, Triumph in God above: And with a well-tuned heart Sing thou the songs of love! Let all thy days Till life shall end, Whate'er he send, Be filled with praise." - Richard Baxter

"Having appropriated to itself all conscious intelligence in the universe ...Man faces the existential crisis of being a solitary and mortal conscious ego thrown into an ultimately meaningless and unknowable universe ...and the psychological and biological crisis of living in a world that has come to be shaped in such a way that it precisely matches his world view" - Richard Tarnas, fully Richard Theodore Tarnas

"Exalt your passion by directing and settling it upon an object the due con-templation of whose loveliness may cure perfectly all hurts received from mortal beauty." - Robert Boyle

"Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes Is the deed ever truly done For Heaven and the future's sakes." - Robert Frost

"But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes." - Robert Frost

"My object in living is to unite My avocation and my vocation As my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes. " - Robert Frost

"Behold the father is his daughter's son, The bird that built the nest is hatched therein, The old of years an hour hath not outrun, Eternal life to live doth now begin, The Word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep, Might feeble is, and force doth faintly creep. O dying souls, behold your living spring; O dazzled eyes, behold your sun of grace; Dull ears, attend what word this Word doth bring; Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace. From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs This life, this light, this Word, this joy repairs. Gift better than himself God doth not know; Gift better than his God no man can see. This gift doth here the giver given bestow; Gift to this gift let each receiver be. God is my gift, himself he freely gave me; God's gift am I, and none but God shall have me. Man altered was by sin from man to beast; Beast's food is hay, hay is all mortal flesh. Now God is flesh and lies in manger pressed As hay, the brutest sinner to refresh. O happy field wherein that fodder grew, Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew. " - Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell

"MAN'S CIVIL WAR - MY hovering thoughts would fly to heaven And quiet nestle in the sky, Fain would my ship in Virtue's shore Without remove at anchor lie. But mounting thoughts are halèd down With heavy poise of mortal load, And blustring storms deny my ship In Virtue's haven secure abode. When inward eye to heavenly sights Doth draw my longing heart's desire, The world with jesses of delights Would to her perch my thoughts retire, Fon Fancy trains to Pleasure's lure, Though Reason stiffly do repine ; Though Wisdom woo me to the saint, Yet Sense would win me to the shrine. Where Reason loathes, there Fancy loves, And overrules the captive will ; Foes senses are to Virtue's lore, They draw the wit their wish to fill. Need craves consent of soul to sense, Yet divers bents breed civil fray ; Hard hap where halves must disagree, Or truce halves the whole betray ! O cruel fight ! where fighting friend With love doth kill a favoring foe, Where peace with sense is war with God, And self-delight the seed of woe ! Dame Pleasure's drugs are steeped in sin, Their sugared taste doth breed annoy ; O fickle sense ! beware her gin, Sell not thy soul to brittle joy !" - Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell

"Almighty God, who sufferest Thyself To be entreated, and who payest heed Unto the poor, how long wilt Thou from me Be far and hidden? Night and day I turn And with a steadfast heart I call to Thee, And pour incessant gratitude for Thy Excelling goodness. O my King, with pain For Thee my heart is torn, in Thee it trusts. Dreaming this shut-in dream, it looks to Thee For life’s interpretation. This I ask, This is the plea to which I beg assent, My sole petition, neither more nor less." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she... A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I bless'd them unaware... alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea... The moving moon went up to the sky, And nowhere did abide; Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside... O sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole! To Mary Queen the praise be given! She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven That slid into my soul... A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune... Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread... He prayeth best who loveth best All things, both great and small... He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast... lonely 'twas that God himself Scarce seemed there to be... A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn... He went like one that hath been stunn'd, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"There was no need to call a council merely to hold discussions of that nature. What is needed at the present time is a new enthusiasm, a new joy and serenity of mind in the unreserved acceptance by all of the entire Christian faith, without forfeiting that accuracy and precision in its presentation which characterized the proceedings of the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council. What is needed, and what everyone imbued with a truly Christian, Catholic and apostolic spirit craves today, is that this doctrine shall be more widely known, more deeply understood, and more penetrating in its effects on men's moral lives. What is needed is that this certain and immutable doctrine, to which the faithful owe obedience, be studied afresh and reformulated in contemporary terms. For this deposit of faith, or truths which are contained in our time-honored teaching is one thing; the manner in which these truths are set forth (with their meaning preserved intact) is something else. This, then, is what will require our careful, and perhaps too our patient, consideration. We must work out ways and means of expounding these truths in a manner more consistent with a predominantly pastoral view of the Church's teaching office." - Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, aka Vatican II

"Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute." - Silvio Pellico

"Then, O King! the God, so saying, Stood, to Pritha's Son displaying All the splendour, wonder, dread Of His vast Almighty-head. Out of countless eyes beholding, Out of countless mouths commanding, Countless mystic forms enfolding In one Form: supremely standing Countless radiant glories wearing, Countless heavenly weapons bearing, Crowned with garlands of star-clusters, Robed in garb of woven lustres, Breathing from His perfect Presence Breaths of every subtle essence Of all heavenly odours; shedding Blinding brilliance; overspreading- Boundless, beautiful- all spaces With His all-regarding faces; So He showed! If there should rise Suddenly within the skies Sunburst of a thousand suns Flooding earth with beams undeemed-of, Then might be that Holy One's Majesty and radiance dreamed of!" - Edwin Arnold, fully Sir Edwin Arnold

"Words, those precious gems of queer shape and gay colours, sharp angles and soft contours, shades of meaning laid one over the other down history, so that for those far back one must delve among the lost and lovely litter that strews the centuries. They arrange themselves in the most elegant odd patterns; the sound the strangest sweet euphonious notes; they flute and sing and taber, and disappear, like apparitions, with a curious perfume and a most melodious twang." - Rose Macauley, fully Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay

"The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal and to teach suffering men. For one who wanted to make a display the thing would have been just to appear and dazzle the beholders. But for Him Who came to heal and to teach the way was not merely to dwell here, but to put Himself at the disposal of those who needed Him, and to be manifested according as they could bear it, not vitiating the value of the Divine appearing by exceeding their capacity to receive it." - Saint Athanasius, aka Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Athanasius the Great, St. Athanasius I of Alexandria, St. Athanasius the Confessor, St. Athanasius the Apostolic NULL

"I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love...I sought what I might love, in love with loving." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

"You know that to join two things together there must be nothing between them or there cannot be a perfect fusion. Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be, without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between, just as God loves us without anything in between." - Saint Catherine of Siena NULL

"By occasions the strong become weak. To converse too frequently with women, and not suffer by it, is as hard as to take fire into one's bosom, and not to be burnt. What has a religious man to do with women, unless it be when he hears their confession, or gives them necessary spiritual instructions? He that thinks himself secure, is undone; the devil finding [something] to take hold on, though it be but a hair, raises a dreadful war." - Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

"Not only do we have to accept that God wounds us, but we have to accept to be wounded where He desires; we have to let God choose, because it is His right." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"No one has become immortal by sloth; nor has any parent prayed that his children should live forever; but rather that they should lead an honorable and upright life." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

"Poetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's." - Samuel Butler

"Disease is a physical process that generally begins that equality which death completes." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"To resist temptation once is not a sufficient proof of honesty. If a servant, indeed, were to resist the continued temptation of silver lying in a window, when he is sure his master does not know how much there is of it, he would give a strong proof of honesty. But this is a proof to which you have no right to put a man. You know there is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"He transmuted his passion into inquisitiveness." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"No one who has seen a baby sinking back satiated from the breast and falling asleep with flushed cheeks and a blissful smile can escape the reflection that this picture persists as a prototype of the expression of sexual satisfaction in later life." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud