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

Elihu Root

I observe that there are two entirely different theories according to which individual men seek to get on in the world. One theory leads a man to pull down everybody around him in order to climb up on them to a higher place. The other leads a man to help everybody around him in order that he may go up with them.

Intelligence | Law | Understanding | Will | Friends | Understand |

Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

For the belief in God is merely the outcome of the belief in man. God is the apex of the pyramid, not the base. Man is the corner- stone; and from the true conception of man have the Jewish thinkers risen to the noblest conception of the Deity. Those are shallow who talk of their agnosticism and parade their atheism. No one is an agnostic and no one is an atheist, except he have neither pity for the weak nor charity for the erring; except he have no mercy for those who need its soothing balm.

God | Intelligence | Solitude | God |

Emma Goldman

Perhaps even more than constituted authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most. His very uniqueness, separateness and differentiation make him an alien, not only in his native place, but even in his own home. Often more so than the foreign born who generally falls in with the established.

Courage | Intelligence | Liberty |

Emmet Fox

The vital importance of forgiveness may not be obvious at first sight, but you may be sure that it is not by chance that every great spiritual teacher has insisted so strongly upon it. You must forgive injuries, not just in words, or as a matter of form, but in your heart -- and that is the long and the short of it. You do this, not for the other person's sake, but for your own sake. Resentment, condemnation, anger, desire to see someone punished are things that rot your soul. Such things fasten your troubles to you with rivets. They fetter you to many other problems that actually have nothing to do with the original grievances themselves.

Intelligence | Life | Life |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

All art is only done by the individual. The individual is all you ever have and all schools only serve to classify their members as failures.

Intelligence | Man | Pride |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.

Enough | Intelligence | Strength |

Esther Perel

It's hard to feel attracted to someone who has abandoned her sense of autonomy. Maybe he can love her, but it's clearly much harder for him to desire her. There's no tension.

Intelligence | Lust | Need | Order | Space |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room - and God damn it - died in a hotel room.

Means | Mind | Psychology | Will |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Some go to prison for stealing, and others for believing that a better system can be provided and maintained than one that makes it necessary for a man to steal in order to live.

Honesty | Oneness | Sentiment | Will |

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 |

Eugenio Maria de Hostos (y Bonilla)

If you wish to know what justice is, let injustice pursue you. When you cannot be just because of your nature, be so through your pride.

Feelings | Freedom | Future | Intelligence | Love | Men | Order | Problems | Will |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

Chance | Ideas | Man | People | Right | Intellect |

Italian Proverbs

Neither women nor linen by candlelight.

Challenge |

Italian Proverbs

There is a cause for all things.

Intelligence | People |

Italian Proverbs

Who by himself can do anything, do not wait for others to do.

Commitment | Good | Means | Mystery | Object | Religion |

Italian Proverbs

Weather, husbands, and sons come as you take them.

Cause | Focus | Think |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Don't dip your beard in the foam, Father! They cried to Thorin. It is long enough without watering it!

Intelligence |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.

Compassion | Intolerance | Meaning | Means | People | Pity | Practice | Religion | Time | World |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?

Intelligence |