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

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

You spend the first term at Oxford meeting interesting and exciting people and the rest of your time there avoiding them.

Men | Thought | Thought |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

ItÂ’s a rather pleasant change when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me.

Thought | World | Thought |

Evelyn Underhill

The purifying worth of prayer consists in the increasing contrast which it sets up between the holy God and the creature; subordinating that creature's fugitive activities and desires to the standard set by this solemn apprehension of Reality.

Action |

Evelyn Underhill

There is no place in my soul, no corner of my character, where God is not.

Action | Beginning | Experience | God | Need | Order | Present | Spirit | God |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

The intellect is a very nice whirligig toy, but how people take it seriously is more than I can understand.

Care | Individual | Order | Thought | Words | Think | Thought |

Felix Adler

A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered.

History | Nothing | Thought | Tradition | World | Loss | Think | Thought | Understand |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.

Thought | Troubles | Thought |

Felix Adler

The frontier of the higher life is everywhere contiguous to the common life, and we can cross the border at any moment. The higher life is as real as the grosser things in which we put our trust. But our eyes must be anointed so that we may see it.

Diversity | Enough | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Individual | Nothing | Receive | Religion | Respect | Right | Sacred | Thought | Will | Respect | Thought |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.

Suicide | Thought | Thought |

Felix Adler

The peace that passeth understanding is that which comes when the pain is not relieved, which subsists in the midst of the painful situation, suffusing it, which springs out of the pain itself, which shimmers on the crest of the wave of pain, which is the spear of frustration transfigured into the shaft of light. It is upon those we love that we must anchor ourselves spiritually in the last moments. The sense of interconnectedness with them stands out vividly by way of contrast at the very moment when our mortal connection with them is about to be dissolved. And the intertwining of our life with theirs, the living in the life that is in them, is but a part of our living in the infinite manifold of the spiritual life. The thought of this, as apprehended, not in terms of knowledge, but in immediate experience, begets the peace that passeth understanding. And it is upon the bosom of that peace that we can pass safely out of the realm of time and space.

Future | Past | Problems | Thinkers | Thought | Warning | Thought |

Felix Adler

The platform of an Ethical Society is itself the altar; the address must be the fire that burns thereon.

Contrast | Life | Life | Love | Mortal | Pain | Peace | Sense | Thought | Time | Understanding | Thought |

Felix Adler

There is a city to be built, the plan of which we carry in our heads, in our hearts. Countless generations have already toiled at the building of it. The effort to aid in completing it, with us, takes the place of prayer. In this sense we say, "Laborare est orare."

Daring | Life | Life | Man | Men | Present | Righteousness | Search | Theories | Thinkers | Thought | Time | Truth | Unity | Will | Woman | World | Youth | Youth | Learn | Thought |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.

Thought | Woman | Thought |

Hannah Arendt

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.

Action |

Hannah Arendt

The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons

Thought | Wise | Thought |

Italian Proverbs

One may have good eyes and yet see nothing.

Action | Man | Prejudice | Reason |

Italian Proverbs

Of three things the devil makes a salad: advocate's tongues, notaries' fingers, and a third that shall be nameless.

Individual | Thought | Will | Thought |

Italian Proverbs

War makes robbers, and peace hangs them.

Authenticity | Good | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Mystery | Thought | Worth | Thought |

Italian Proverbs

Who buys land buys war.

Emotions | Thought | Thought |

Italian Proverbs

Weddings and spiritual matters are heaven sent.

Life | Life | Thought | Thought |