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

Eugen Drewermann

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Money | Learn |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

Whence comes to man the most sustainable of the pleasures of his heart, the pleasure of melancholy , this charming full of secrets , who is living his pain and s' love even in the sense of its ruin? [Where does the most enduring human enjoyments of his heart, the pleasure of melancholy, this charming full of secrets, which makes its living pain and still love the feeling of ruin?]

Love | Money | Sacrifice | Value |

Eudora Welty

I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.

Character | Good | Pleasure | Speech | Thought | World | Think | Thought |

Eudora Welty

Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.

Cause | Story |

Eugen Herrigel

Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! he exclaimed. The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.

Aptitude | Awareness | Cult | Danger | Ego | Existence | Life | Life | Present | Reason | Right | Spirit | Success | Time | Witness | Worth | Talent | Danger | Awareness | Teacher |

Eugene Peterson

Why are we put on the spot of being God’s defender. We are expected to explain God to his disappointed clients. We’re thrust into the role of a clerk at Wal-Mart’s customer service desk – the complaints department of humanity.

Money | Sympathy |

Ethiopian Proverbs

When the heart overflows, it comes out through the mouth.

Eudora Welty

My love for the alphabet, which endures, grew out of reciting it but, before that, out of seeing the letters on the page. In my own story books, before I could read them for myself I fell in love with various winding, enchanted-looking initials drawn by Walter Crane at the head of fairy tales. In Once upon a time, an o had a rabbit running it as a treadmill, his feet upon flowers. When the day came years later for me to see the Book of Kells, all the wizardry of letter, initial, and word swept over me a thousand times, and the illumination, the gold, seemed a part of the world's beauty and holiness that had been there from the start.

Indifference | Passion |

Eugene Peterson

We live in an “age of sensation.” We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship.

People | Time |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

When a man does not form connections, it is going to be the point considered, but a woman whom no one seems to have failed to attach any part.

Evil | Men |

Eugen Drewermann

If you want to change people by talking about God, then there is only one way: instead of teaching God, you must live God. Because: “teaching” God is unthinkable in any other way than the way you would teach love or poetry. You teach love only through love, poetry only through writing poetry, faith in God only through a contagious way of trusting.

Money |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

It kills the pain. You go back until at last you are beyond its reach. Only the past when you were happy is real.

Accident | Earth | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Mystery | Will | Woman | Understand |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time

Dreams | Life | Life | Little | Worth |

Eudora Welty

For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

Art | Awareness | Mortal | Past | Present | Art | Awareness |

Eugen Herrigel

The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure.

Right | Will | Learn | Think |

Eugen Drewermann

You see, my Lord Archbishop, what is "dubious" about my theology is not that it contradicts particular doctrinal teachings, things are much worse or better: what I want, is no more and no less than a fundamental change in the whole way that theology is done today; but I want this out of faith, not out of faithlessness.

Need | Right | Struggle | Superstition | Suspicion | Talking | Theology |

Eugene Peterson

All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.

Conversation | Hurry | Prayer | Sense | Work |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future too.

Children | Experience | Wisdom | Old |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

One may not give one's soul to a devil of hate — and remain forever scatheless.

Chance | Fame |

Ethiopian Proverbs

When one sets a portion for oneself, usually it is not too small.