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 James

If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. How much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged.

Effort | Heart | Purpose | Purpose |

William James

To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nest full of eggs was not utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her.

Effort | Sense | Spirit | Universe | Will |

Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki

No penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure.

Art | Effort | Learning | Reward | Study | Will | Worth | Art |

Egyptian Proverbs

Making money selling manure is better than losing money selling musk.

Effort |

Egyptian Proverbs

You can't escape your luck.

Effort |

Egyptian Proverbs

At the time of a test, a person rises or falls.

Effort | Heaven | Hope | Knowledge |

Elif Safak

The truth is that I have not sought to understand the world. I tried to change it.

Effort | Truth |

Elihu Root

Secretary of War Stanton used to get out of patience with Lincoln because he was all the time pardoning men who ought to be shot.

Effort | Men | Mob | Occupation | Organization | Past | Power | Principles | Purpose | Purpose | Success | Work |

Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen

The cat came nimbling back on the tips of its paws and looked at her scornfully. She climbed on a step-ladder to loop back the curtains at the top and let in more light, then she felt dizzy up there and screamed. Her husband, who happened to be passing across the kitchen, had to come in and help her down again. He kissed her – they had been married so recently – but she struggled from his arms in a preoccupied way, like a cat, and hurried away to blow dust off a fern.

Effort | Individual |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did.

Distress | Effort | Enough | Good | Soul | Will | World | Crisis | Happiness | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I knew then that this is how God loves us all and receives us all, and that there is no such thing in this universe as hell, except maybe in our own terrified minds. Because if even one broken and limited human being could experience even one such episode of absolute forgiveness and acceptance of her own self, then imagine—just imagine!—what God, in all His eternal compassion, can forgive and accept.

Distress | Effort | Enough | Good | People | Soul | Will | World | Crisis | Happiness | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Has become my thoughts more like neighbors veterans, annoying, but they have become dear, there is room for all of us in this neighborhood.

Distress | Effort | Enough | Good | Soul | Will | World | Crisis | Happiness |

Elizabeth Gilbert

You are not only what you think about it. The feelings are a slave to your thoughts, and you're a slave to your emotions.

Divinity | Effort | Experience |

Elizabeth Gilbert

When you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt-this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty to find something beautiful within life no matter how slight.

Effort | Love |

Emil M. Cioran

No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.

Apathy | Effort |

Emile Zola

In love as in speculation there is much filth; in love also, people think only of their own gratification; yet without love there would be no life, and the world would come to an end.

Despair | Destroy | Effort | Good | Honor | Innocence | Life | Life | Man | Men | Office | Order | People | Public | Society | War | Society |

Emma Goldman

Its first ethical precept is the identity of means used and aims sought. The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and wellbeing. Unless this be the essential aim of revolution, violent social changes would have no justification. For external social alterations can be, and have been, accomplished by the normal processes of evolution. Revolution, on the contrary, signifies not mere external change, but internal, basic, fundamental change. That internal change of concepts and ideas, permeating ever-larger social strata, finally culminates in the violent upheaval known as revolution.

Effort |

Emma Goldman

Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.

Absurd | Effort | Era | Men | Silence |