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

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

I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death... I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the Eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness.

Man | Pleasure |

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

It is not in him to be loved like me: how can she love in him what he has not?

Business | Heaven | Man | Business |

Emma Goldman

Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation, one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment. It is a change of form only, not of substance, as so tragically proven by Russia.

Discovery | Freedom | Man | Personality | Society | Work | Society | Discovery |

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

Time brought resignation and a melancholy sweeter than common joy.

Earth | Existence | Man |

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

But, thou art ever there, to bring the hovering vision back, and breathe new glories o'er the blighted spring, and call a lovelier Life from Death, and whisper, with a voice divine, of real worlds, as bright as thine.

Man | Rest |

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

But there's this difference: one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver.

Bible | Man | Bible | Old |

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

Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king.

Earth | Force | Gold | Life | Life | Little | Love | Magic | Man | Power | World |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

That I shall love always, I argue thee that love is life, and life hath immortality.

Children | Man | Success | Truth |

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

I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!

Man | Pleasure |

Emma Goldman

Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman.

Bigotry | Economics | Future | God | Kill | Love | Man | Means | Men | Past | Position | Religion | Will | Worth | God |

Emma Goldman

No sacrifice is lost for a great ideal!

Ignorance | Inhumanity | Man | Means | Protest | Revolution | Spirit | System | Wrong |

Emma Goldman

Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.

Earth | Freedom | Gold | Life | Life | Love | Magic | Man | Power | World |

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

I've watched thee every hour — I know my mighty sway — I know my magic power to drive thy griefs away —

Business | Heaven | Love | Man | Thought | Business | Thought |

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

Though earth and man were gone, and suns and universes ceased to be, and Thou wert left alone, every existence would exist in Thee.

Angels | Business | Heart | Heaven | Love | Man | Thought | Will | Work | Business | Thought |

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

Reason, indeed, may oft complain for Nature's sad reality, and tell the suffering heart, how vain its cherished dreams must always be; and Truth may rudely trample down the flowers of Fancy, newly-blown.

Wise |

Emma Goldman

It is safe to say that no other superstition is so detrimental to growth, so enervating and paralyzing to the minds and hearts of the people, as the superstition of Morality.

Man |

Emma Goldman

I don't care if a man's theory for tomorrow is correct, I care if his spirit of today is correct.

God | Man | God |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride, night unto day is married, morn unto eventide, earth a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true, and Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue.

Man | Truth |

Emma Goldman

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.

Consciousness | Man | Philosophy | Society | Unity | Society | Teacher |