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

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

While loving glory so much how can you persist in a plan which will cause you to lose it?

Atheism | Crime | Fanaticism | Passion |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Self-knowledge is everything. If you know what you are all about, you know what life is all about. You are not separate from life; you are life itself.

Crime |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

I said that someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours — a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God — and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly — not miserably — knowing how to die.

Blame | Chance | Crime | Guilt | Society | Society |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

Church | Crime | Sloth |

Tryon Edwards

To possess money is very well; it may be a most valuable servant; to be possessed by it, is to be possessed by a devil, and one of the meanest and worst kind of devils.

Character | Crime | Murder | Murder |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

If one yearns to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fjords. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, the shadows of the lily pads. How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the 'comfort' of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment.

Crime | God | Public | Will | God | Forgive |

William Shakespeare

Ay, but hearken, sir; though the chameleon Love can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have meat.

Art | Better | Comedy | Crime | Husband | Lust | Music | Object | Play | Time | Words | Art |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

They say that God lives very high! But if you look above the pines You cannot see our God. And why? And if you dig down in the mines You never see Him in the gold, Though from Him all that's glory shines. God is so good, He wears a fold Of heaven and earth across His face - Like secrets kept, for love, untold. But still I feel that His embrace Slides down by thrills, through all things made, Through sight and sound of every place: As if my tender brother laid On my shut lids, her kisses' pressure, Half waking me at night; and said, Who kissed through the dark, dear guesser?

Change | Crime |

Emile Zola

A god of kindness would be charitable to all. Your god of wrath and punishment is but a monstrous phantasy... It is not necessary that one should humble oneself to deserve assistance, it is sufficient that one should suffer.

Crime | Duty | History | Insult | Justice | Society | Suffering | Truth | Insult | Society |

Emile Zola

Have you ever reflected that posterity may not be the faultless dispenser of justice that we dream of? One consoles oneself for being insulted and denied, by reyling on the equity of the centuries to come; just as the faithful endure all the abominations of this earth in the firm belief of another life, in which each will be rewarded according to his deserts. But suppose Paradise exists no more for the artist than it does for the Catholic, suppose that future generations prolong the misunderstanding and prefer amiable little trifles to vigorous works! Ah! What a sell it would be, eh? To have led a convict's life - to have screwed oneself down to one's work - all for a mere delusion! Bah! What does it matter? Well, there's nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman. When the earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won't add one atom to its dust.

Crime | Guilt | Judgment | Opinion | Treason | Guilty |

Emile Zola

Angelique, with both hands open, lying limply on her knees, was giving herself. And Felicien remembered the evening on which she had run barefoot through the grass, so adorable that he had pursued her, and whispered in her ear, I love you. And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, I love you. And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, I love you, the eternal cry that had finally emerged from her wide-open heart. I love you... Take me, carry me away, I am yours.

Care | Cause | Crime | Day | Disgrace | Earth | Exploit | God | Important | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Nature | Pain | Suffering | Tears | World | God | Vice |

Emile Zola

But you said so yourself, the poor lass will die of it...Do you really want her to die?

Absolute | Conduct | Crime | Evil | Innocence | Justice | Law | Mankind | Office | Public | Suffering | Time | War | Guilty |

Emile Zola

It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She herself never changed; when she loved anyone, it was for life. She could not understand desertion; it was something so huge, so monstrous that the notion of it made her little heart break.

Crime | Defense | Existence | Important | Justification | War |

Emile Zola

Nothing is more irritating than to hear honest writers protest about depravity when one is quite certain that they make these noises without knowing what they are protesting about.

Crime | Suffering |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class.

Beginning | Birth | Crime | Cruelty | Dawn | Ignorance | Poverty | Cruelty |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along; he must offer some little opposition. Even the great Victorian artists were all anti-Victorian, despite the pressures to conform.

Aesthetic | Crime | Desire |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

I can never understand how two men can write a book together; to me, that's like three people getting together to have a baby.

Aesthetic | Crime | Desire |

Everett Dirksen, fully Everett McKinley Dirksen

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money. [Attributed but disavowed by Dirksen]

Crime | Evidence | Innocence | Need | Understand |

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

Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and L£thien

Crime | Individual | Power | World |