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

Elizabeth Gilbert

The six elements of her Fail Proof Broken-Heart Curing Treatment: 'Vitamin E, get much sleep, drink much water, travel to a place far away from the person you loved, meditate and teach your heart that this is destiny.

Argument | Marriage | Reason |

Elizabeth Gilbert

So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are correct, but in only one respect - only if they happen to be talking about Judaism. Christianity simply does not share that deep and consistent historical reverence toward matrimony. Lately it has, yes- but not originally. For the first thousand or so years of Christian history, the church regarded monogamous marriage as marginally less wicked that flat-out whoring but only very marginally.

Care | Death | Depression | Friend | Lending | Life | Life | Loneliness | Love | Mind | Mistake | Need | Nothing | Office | Reason | Reflection | Sadness | Security | Time | Waiting | Will | Writing |

Elizabeth Gilbert

The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,...The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself.

Hope | Reason | Trust |

Ellen Goodman

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.

Joy | Neglect | Pleasure |

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Embrace truth as it is revealed to-day by human reason.

Body | Diet | Sound |

Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

I thought that prattling boys and girls would fill this empty room; that my rich heart would gather flowers From childhood's opening bloom. One child and two green graves are mine, this is God's gift to me; a bleeding, fainting, broken heart— This is my gift to Thee.

Need | Perfection | Reason | Will | Learn | Understand |

Elizabeth Gould Davis

Recorded history starts with a patriarchal revolution. Let it continue with the matriarchal counterrevolution that is the only hope for the survival of the human race.

Accident | Error | Evidence | Man | Mother |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

The human race is the basis on which heaven is founded, is because man was last created, and that which is last created is the basis of all that precedes.

Heaven | Lord | Love | Reason | Wisdom |

Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

Too much principle is often more harmful than too little.

Self | Teach | Learn |

Ellen Key, fully Ellen Karolina Sofia Key

The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

History | Right | Self |

Emil M. Cioran

For the man who has got in the nasty habit of unmasking appearances, event and misunderstanding are synonyms. To make for the essential is to throw up the game, to admit one is defeated.

Earth | Existence | Life | Life | Reason | Time |

Dorothy Parker

There was nothing separate about her days. Like drops on the window-pane, they ran together and trickled away.

Cost | Reason |

Dorothy Parker

Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.

Change | Influence | Safe |

Emil M. Cioran

Trees are massacred, houses go up - faces, faces everywhere. Man is spreading. Man is the cancer of the earth.

Guarantee | Men | Paradox |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return - the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame - shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.

Art | Change | Danger | Darkness | Doubt | Dreams | Grief | Guile | Hate | Heart | Hope | Liberty | Life | Life | Pain | Quiet | Reason | Suffering | Suspicion | Thankfulness | Trust | Truth | World | Danger | Art |

Emma Goldman

But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it endure under Anarchism? Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities. Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations. This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women the world over; a conclusion resulting from the close and studious observation of the tendencies of modern society: individual liberty and economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in man.

Atheism | Belief | Earth | Fighting | God | Individual | Influence | Man | Power | Rule | Servitude | Thought | God | Thought |

Emma Goldman

It takes less mental effort to condemn than to think.

Atheism | Fighting | Influence | Thought | Thought |

Emma Goldman

Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us.

Better | Glory | Justify | Patriotism | Training | Will |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

You are a dog in the manger, Cathy, and desire no one to be loved but yourself!

Change | Eternal | Existence | Little | Love | Self | Sense | Time | Universe | Will |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

Heathcliff, make the world stop right here. Make everything stop and stand still and never move again. Make the moors never change and you and I never change.

Reason |