Great Throughts Treasury

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

Jessamyn West, fully Mary Jessamyn West

American Novelist, Short-Story Writer

"The emotion, the ecstasy of love, we all want, but God spare us the responsibility."

"It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes. It takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own."

"We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions."

"Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures."

"A religious wakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain."

"A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing. "

"Teaching is the royal road to learning. "

"A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever."

"The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future. "

"Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free."

"A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain."

"The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow. "