Great Throughts Treasury

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

Emma Lazarus

American Poet, best known for "The New Collusus" inscribed on the Statue of Liberty

"[Inscription on the Statute of Liberty] Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

"Until we are all free, we are none of us free. "

"Life's sharpest rapture is surcease of pain."

"His cup is gall, his meat is tears, his passion lasts a thousand years."

"I am perfectly conscious that this contempt and hatred underlies the general tone of the community towards us, and yet when I even remotely hint at the fact that we are not a favorite people I am accused of stirring up strife and setting barriers between the two sects."

"I am never going to write for the sake of writing."

"Jews are the intensive form of any nationality whose language and customs they adopt."

"My own curiosity and interest are insatiable."

"Lo--a black line of birds in wavering thread bore him the greetings of the deathless dead!"

"The New Colossus - Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land; here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she with silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

"The particular article ought in my opinion to be treated with absolute contempt. It is too vile to touch."

"Still on Israel's head forlorn, every nation heaps its scorn."

"We who are prosperous and independent have not sufficient homogeneity to champion on the ground of a common creed, common stock, a common history, a common heritage of misfortune, the rights of the lowest and poorest Jew-peddler who flees, for life and liberty of thought, from Slavonic mobs."