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

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored

Books | Duty |

Ezra Taft Benson

Jefferson warned that we should not talk about confidence in men but that we should inhibit their power through the Constitution.

Blessings | Freedom | Opportunity | World |

Ezra Taft Benson

With all my heart I love our great nation. I have lived and traveled abroad just enough to make me appreciate rather fully what we have in America. To me the U. S. is not just another nation. It is not just one of a family of nations. The U. S. is a nation with a great mission to perform for the benefit and blessing of liberty-loving people everywhere.

Books | Church | Counsel | Desire | Duty | Evil | Faith | God | Good | Government | Influence | Law | Lord | Love | Meaning | Means | Men | Morality | People | Principles | Qualities | Receive | Religion | Right | Rule | Will | Wisdom | Wise | Government | Counsel | God | Learn |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Light | Man | Reading |

Ezer Weizman

Give it a kick at the right place and it'll work.

Comfort | Pain | Sorrow | Will |

Ezra Taft Benson

For years we have heard of the role the elders could play in saving the Constitution from total destruction. But how can the elders be expected to save it if they have not studied it and are not sure if it is being destroyed or what is destroying it? An informed patriotic gentile was dumbfounded when he heard of Joseph Smith’s reported prophecy regarding the mission our elders could perform in saving the Constitution. He lived in a Mormon community with nice people who were busily engaged in other activities but who had little concern in preserving their freedom. He wondered if maybe a letter should not be sent to President McKay, urging him to release some of the elders from their present Church activities so there would be a few who could help step forward to save the Constitution. Now it is not so much a case of a man giving up all his other duties to fight for freedom, as it is a case of a man getting his life in balance so he can discharge all of his God-given responsibilities. And of all these responsibilities President McKay has said that we have “no greater immediate responsibility” than “to protect the freedom vouchsafed by the Constitution of the United States.” There is no excuse that can compensate for the loss of liberty. Satan is anxious to neutralize the inspired counsel of the Prophet and hence keep the priesthood off balance, ineffective and inert in the fight for freedom. He does this through diverse means, including the use of perverse reasoning. . . The cause of freedom is a most basic part of our religion. Our position on freedom helped get us to this earth and it can make the difference as to whether we get back home or not.

Fear | Hope | Work | World | Leader |

Ezra Taft Benson

Tonight I will speak to you about our beloved republic and the inspired agents whom God raised up to establish the foundation upon which our liberty rests. . . . I speak to you as members of the “household of faith,” the Lord’s true church, and remind you of your solemn charge to uphold, sustain, and defend the kingdom of God. The destiny of America was divinely decreed. The events that established our great nation were foreknown to God and revealed to prophets of old. As in an enacted drama, the players who came on the scene were rehearsed and selected for their parts. Their talent, abilities, capacities, and weaknesses were known before they were born.

Abundance | Authority | Body | Books | Man | Mother | Sense | Tenderness |

Ezra Taft Benson

We had better take our small pain now than our greater loss later. There were souls who wished afterwards that they had stood and fought with Washington and the founding fathers, but they waited too long—they passed up eternal glory. There has never been a greater time than now to stand up against entrenched evil. And while the gentiles established the Constitution, we have a divine mandate to preserve it. But unfortunately today in this freedom struggle, many gentiles are showing greater wisdom in their generation than the children of light.

Attention | Blessings | Evil | Faith | Focus | Freedom | Individual | Life | Life | Principles | Reading | Will | Learn |

Ezra Taft Benson

Today, with the abundance of books available, it is the mark of a truly educated man to know what not to read. … Feed only on the best. As John Wesley’s mother counseled him: ‘Avoid whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish for spiritual things, … increases the authority of the body over the mind.

Devil | Government | Men | Security | Government |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

You damn sadist! said mr. cummings, you try to make people think.

Man | Reading |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

I worked as a teacher in the public school system in New York City for several years, and I was a victim of the layoffs, you know, in the mid-'70s. And then I worked as a sales engineer for a company in New Jersey that was selling industrial filtration equipment.

Religion |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you could do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint could think he understood.

Light | Man | Reading |

Felix Adler

Of the origin of things we know nothing, and can know nothing. Perfection does not reveal itself to us as existent in the beginning; but as something that ought to be, something new which we are to help create. Somehow the secret of the universe is hidden in our breast. Somehow the destinies of the universe depend upon our exertions.

Church | Power |

Ezra Taft Benson

Humility responds to God's will-to the fear of His judgments and to the needs of those around us. To the proud, the applause of the world rings in their ears; to the humble, the applause of heaven warms their hearts. Someone has said, "Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man."

Boys | Children | Church | Desire | Family | Future | Giving | Hope | Man | Men | Mission | Prayer | Principles | Reading | Religion | Will | Old |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

I've spoken with friends who are rabbis and priests and we've agreed that most people have an emotional attachment to their faith, a desire to fulfill their spiritual longings, but they are not experts in understanding the history of their religion.

People | Responsibility | Truth |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

All great art is born of the metropolis.

Extreme |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

Artists are the antennae of the race but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists.

Books | Good | Reading | Understand |

Ezra Taft Benson

We honor these partners [friends outside the Church] because their devotion to correct principles overshadowed their devotion to popularity, party, or personalities. We honor our founding fathers of this republic for the same reason. God raised up these patriotic partners to perform their mission, and he called them “wise men.” The First Presidency acknowledged that wisdom when they gave us the guideline a few years ago of supporting political candidates “who are truly dedicated to the Constitution in the tradition of our Founding Fathers.”. . . Our wise founders seemed to understand, better than most of us, our own scripture, which states that “it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority . . . they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.” To help prevent this, the founders knew that our elected leaders should be bound by certain fixed principles. Said Thomas Jefferson: “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” These wise founders, our patriotic partners, seemed to appreciate more than most of us the blessings of the boundaries that the Lord set within the Constitution, for he said, “And as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil.” In God the founders trusted, and in his Constitution — not in the arm of flesh. “O Lord,” said Nephi, “I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; . . . cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm.”

Better | Children | Eternal | Freedom | Pain | Time | Wisdom | Loss |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

As a bathtub lined with white porcelain, when the hot water gives out or goes tepid, so is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, o my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady.

Race | Trust | Will | Learn |

Ezra Taft Benson

May we be worthy of the freedoms that have been provided us in our Constitution, and equal to the trials and tests that shall surely come. We truly have special and individual responsibilities to befriend and to defend that “glorious standard,” our Constitution.

God | Need | Principles | Reading | Understanding | Will | Wise | Words | God | Understand |