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 Dement, fully William Charles Dement

The biological clock is responsive to light at certain times... Bright light in the morning will tend to advance the clock. In other words, alertness will occur earlier and sleep will occur earlier.

Children | Eternal | Faith | God | Happy | Heart | Hope | Joy | Music | People | Rule | Scandal | Shame | Smile | Soul | Will | Work | God |

Willem de Kooning

Man’s own form in space – his body – was a private prison; and that it was because of this imprisoning misery – because he was hungry and overworked and went to a horrid place called home late at night in the rain, and his bones ached and his head was heavy.

Music | Object | Writing |

Willem de Kooning

Watercolors is the first and the last thing an artist does.

Music | Object | Writing |

William Blake

Praises reap not! Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!

Music | Nations |

Willem de Kooning

In the Italian Renaissance… there was no ‘subject-matter’. What we call subject matter now, was then painting itself. Subject matter came later on when parts of those works were taken out arbitrarily, when a man for no reason is sitting, standing or ling down. He became a bather, she became a bather; she was reclining; he just stood there looking ahead. That is when the posing in panting began… For really, when you think of all the life and death problems in the art of Renaissance, who cares if a Chevalier is laughing or that a young girl has a red blouse on.

Angels | Art | Change | Cost | Depression | Extravagance | Man | Money | Music | Relationship | Art | Friends |

William Cowper

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude; but grant me still a friend in my retreat, whom I may whisper--solitude it sweet.

Force | Memory | Music |

William Cowper

Not scorned in heaven, though little noticed here.

Music | Spirit |

William Cowper

I believe no man was ever scolded out of his sins.

Journey | Music | Sound |

Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

Life is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel.

Language | Music |

Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

You feel that, properly, Alexandra's house is the big-out-of-doors, and that it is in the soil that she expresses herself.

Cause | Hope | Little | Love | Music | Afraid |

Wendell Phillips

We declare war with the wages system, which demoralizes alike the hirer and the hired, cheats both, and enslaves the workingman.

Music |

Wilhelm Reich

You beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.

Body | Children | Little | Music | Woman | Learn | Think | Understand |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

All space, all time, the stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use, fill'd with eidolons only. The noiseless myriads, the infinite oceans where the rivers empty, the separate countless free identities, like eyesight, the true realities, eidolons. Not this the world, nor these the universes, they the universes, purport and end, ever the permanent life of life, eidolons, eidolons...

Music |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you nonetheless and filter and fibre your blood.

Argument | Custom | God | Knowledge | Little | Men | Mind | Music | Peace | Promise | Spirit | God |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird, comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well, for the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake, lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, there in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.

Good | Music | Play | Spirit |

Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis

Leaders should always expect the very best of those around them. They know that people can change and grow.

Music |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

The qualities of creativity and genius are within you, awaiting your decision to match up with the power of intention.

Life | Life | Music | Purpose | Purpose |

Wayne Muller

All life requires a rhythm of rest.

God | Life | Life | Music | Quiet | God |

Wayne Muller

We are called to be strong companions and clear mirrors to one another, to seek those who reflect with compassion and a keen eye how we are doing, whether we seem centered or off course ... we need the nourishing company of others to create the circle needed for growth, freedom and healing.

Conversation | Day | Eternal | Growth | Land |

Wendell Berry

If you’re going to have sustainable agriculture, it has to be adapted locally. Local adaptation means that you observe in the economic landscape the same processes that you find in healthy natural landscapes: You must have diversity. You must have both plants and animals. You must waste nothing. You must obey the law of return — that is, you must return to the ground all the nutrients that you take from it. You must protect the soil from erosion at all times. You must make maximum use of sunlight. In those circumstances, you may leave the crops and animals pretty much to fend for themselves against diseases. The farm will have some disease, but it won’t have epidemics. If you look at a healthy forest, for instance, you see some prematurely dead trees, but not massive numbers of them. … It’s the diametric opposite of reductive science, and industrial agriculture is based on reductive science.

Citizenship | Conversation | Right |