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

William Shakespeare

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, the bird of dawning singeth all night long, and then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad, the nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, no fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm. So hallowed and so gracious is that time.

Fault | Virtue | Virtue | Fault |

William Shakespeare

Such an exploit have I in hand, Ligarius, Had you a healthful ear to hear of it. Julius Caesar (Brutus at II, i)

Blush | Grace | Virtue | Virtue |

Elizabeth Gilbert

As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; even one puff is bad for you.

Important | Laziness | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Writing |

Elizabeth Gilbert

The Buddha taught that all human suffering is rooted in desire. Don't we all know this to be true? Any of us who have ever desired something and then didn't get it (or, worse, got it and subsequently lost it) know full well the suffering of which the Buddah spoke. Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody - really want him - it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause you lacerating injury. All you know is that you must obtain the object of your desire by any means necessary, and then never be parted. All you can think about is your beloved. Lost in such primal urgency, you no longer completely own yourself. You have become an indentured servant to your own yearnings.

Alms | Good | People | Property |

Elizabeth Gould Davis

It is not men that most women worry about when they rise to the defense of the status quo. Their apparent endorsement of male supremacy is, rather, a pathetic striving for self-respect, self-justification, and self-pardon. After fifteen hundred years of subjection to men, Western woman finds it almost unbearable to face the fact that she has been hoodwinked and enslaved by her inferiors — that the master is lesser than the slave.

Envy | Need |

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brain of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of 'thus saith the Lord.

Children | Property |

Émile Souvestre

Two thirds of human existence are wasted in hesitation.

Men | Virtue | Virtue |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Some keep the Sabbath going to church, I keep it staying at home, with a bobolink for a chorister, and an orchard for a dome.

Despair | Envy | Woe |

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

Really, Miss Catherine, how can I know?' I replied. 'To be sure, considering the exhibition you performed in his presence this afternoon, I might say it would be wise to refuse him: since he asked you after that, he must either be hopelessly stupid or a venturesome fool.

Envy |

Emma Goldman

The people are urged to be patriotic ... by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegience to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.

Appetite | Means | Power | Property | Wealth |

Eric S. Raymond

Being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker anymore than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer

Good | Property |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

And yet every so often, the heart of America, shuddering with indignation, sends a nervous spasm through the gentle back of the Andes, and tumultuous shock waves assault the surface of the land. Three times the cuppola of proud Santo Domingo has collapsed from on high to the rhythm of broken bones and its worn walls have opened and fallen too. But the foundations they rest on are unmoved, the great blocks of the Temple of the Sun exhibit their gray stone indifferently; however colossal the disaster befalling its oppressor, not one of its huge rocks shifts from its place.

Life | Life | Man | Property | Worth |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

If our intellectual leaders treat work as nothing but a necessary evil soon to be abolished as far as the majority is concerned, the urge to minimize it right away is hardly a surprising reaction, and the problem of motivation becomes insoluble.

Envy | Greed | Inevitable | Man | Nothing | Power | Problems |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

The natural advantages of the cultivation of sugar in Cuba are obvious, but the predominant fact is that Cuba was developed as a sugar factory of the United States.

Life | Life | Man | Property | Worth |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

The arising of this error, so egregious and so firmly rooted, is closely connected with the philosophical, not to say religious, changes during the last three or four centuries in man's attitude to natureÂ…Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.

Envy | Greed | Growth | Regard |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

The law of attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet getting more and more of the way you FEEL.

Achievement | Attainment | Body | Joy | Money | Possessions | Property | Success |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

The loss really irreparable is that of desires.

Virtue | Virtue |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Mardonius was more fond of me than I was of him. That always gives one an advantage.

Literature | Virtue | Virtue | World |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The united vote of those who toil and have not will vanquish those who have and toil not, and solve forever the problems of democracy.

Courage | Injustice | Injustice | Intelligence | Justice | Men | Power | Right | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wrong |

Euripedes NULL

Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.

Children | Love | People | Virtue | Virtue |