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

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

I'm in the business of providing people with secondary satisfactions. It wouldn't have done me much good if they had all written their own plays, would it?

Ability | Change | Experience | Important | Myth | Qualities | Reading | Space | Time |

J. L. Balsford

There are men whose stomachs are the clamorous creditors that sooner or later throw them into bankruptcy.

Mother |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

Experience | God | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | Sense | God |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

A synopsis is a cold thing. You do it with the front of your mind. If you're going to stay with it, you never get quite the same magic as when you're going all out.

Ability | Change | Experience | Important | Qualities | Reading | Space | Time |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must be something wrong with this fellow.

Experience | Speculation | World |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness - when a glorious idea comes to mind and, secondly, when a last page has been written and you haven't had time to know how much better it ought to be.

Experience | Fear | Illusion | World |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Our dourest parsons, who followed the nonconformist fashion of long extemporary prayers, always seemed to me to be bent on bullying God.

Change | Duty | Ideas | Nature | Opinion | Think |

Italian Proverbs

Women are wise impromptu, fools on reflection.

Ecstasy | Eternity | Experience | Golden Rule | Rule | Speculation | Time | World | Golden Rule |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

I will give up my belief in evolution if someone finds a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian.

Mother |

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

I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be.

Anger | Behavior | Courage | Experience | Listening | Model |

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

I will vouch for him before the seat of Denethor,' said Gandalf. 'And as for valour, that cannot be computed by stature. He has passed through more battles and perils than you have, Ingold, though you be twice his height; and he comes now from the storming of Isengard, of which we bear tidings, and great weariness is on him, or I would wake him. His name is Peregrin, a very valiant man.'

Father | Mother |