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

Elizabeth Gilbert

Marriage is a game. They (the anxious and powerful) set the rules. We (the ordinary and subversive) bow obediently before those rules. And then we go home and do whatever the hell we want anyhow.

Work | Happiness |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Desperate love is always the toughest way to do it.

Cause | Will | Happiness |

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

I had long ago learned that when you are the giant, alien visitor to a remote and foreign culture it is sort of your job to become an object of ridicule. It’s the least you can do, really, as a polite guest.

Culture | Happiness |

Elizabeth Gilbert

My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: I want a spiritual teacher.

People | Will | World | Happiness | Think |

Elizabeth Kenny

I play the Demon myself -- no puppets involved.

Earth | People | Happiness |

Elizabeth Lesser

If we want liberation, we must rewrite the Sleeping Beauty myth. No one is coming and no one else is to blame.

Eternal | Nature | Peace | Will | Happiness |

Elizabeth Gilbert

We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, 'I've been there.' This was unclear to him at first-I've been where? But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific loacation, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.

Fortune | Life | Life | Right | Search | Happiness |

Elizabeth Gilbert

When you set out in the world to help yourself, sometimes you end up helping Tutti.

Duty | Life | Life | Sense | Happiness |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Where am I getting the brain space to store these words? I'm hoping that maybe my mind has decided to clear out some old negative thoughts and sad memories and replace them with these shiny new words.

Guilt | Happiness |

Elizabeth Gilbert

The culture of Rome just doesn't match the culture of Yoga, not as far as I can see. In fact, I've decided that Rome and Yoga don't have anything in common at all. Except for the way they both kind of remind you of the word toga.

Cause | Desire | Means | Object | Suffering | Will | Happiness | Think |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Whatever's lost, it first was won; we will not struggle nor impugn. Perhaps the cup was broken here, that Heaven's new wine might show more clear. I praise Thee while my days go on.

Life | Life | Soul | Tears | Will | Happiness |

Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

Well! This is one side of the story, to be sure, but I look at the other. Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God; and the body in which it dwells is worth all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Christ's name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mother's heart, welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her lifelong prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, how wondrously blest!

Good | Life | Life | Love | Memoirs | Suffering | Happiness |

Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

I have little faith in the theory that organized killing is the best prelude to peace.

Better | Contentment | Happy | Thought | Youth | Youth | Happiness | Thought |

Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

Only they have to weep bitter tears who know what has come to them is the result of their foolish conduct, their ignorant way, their want of proper understanding of life and what love means.

Books | Character | Common Sense | Force | Righteousness | Rites | Salvation | Sense | System | World | Happiness |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

Angels from the Lord lead and protect us every moment and every moment of every moment.

Happiness |

Dorothy Parker

Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom.

Boys | Little | Happiness |

Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

It is human nature to overestimate the thing you've never had.

Care | Good | Man | Happiness |

Émile Souvestre

The man in power gives up his peace.

Man | Wise | Happiness |

Emile Zola

Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!

Absolute | Beginning | Disease | Eternal | Religion | Science | Old | Understand |