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

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Music |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

My worst mistake was the stupid suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism, all along that spoiled everything.

Age | Better | Emotions | Feelings | Plenty | Struggle |

Ezra Taft Benson

The key to overcoming aloneness and a feeling of uselessness for one who is physically able is to step outside yourself by helping others who are truly needy. We promise those who will render this kind of service that, in some measure, you will be healed of the loss of loved ones or the dread of being alone. The way to feel better about your own situation is to improve someone else's circumstances.

Capacity | Feelings | Influence | People |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point.

Church | Music |

Felix Adler

The fact that there is a spiritual power in us, that is to say, a power which testifies to the unity of our life with the life of others, which impels us to regard others as other selves — this fact conies home to us even more forcibly in sorrow than in joy. It is thrown into clearest relief on the background of pain. In the glow of achievement we are apt to be full of a false self-importance. But in moments of weakness we realize, through contrast, the infinitely superior strength of the power whose very humble organs and ministers we are. It is then we come to understand that, isolated from it, we are nothing; at one with it, identified with it, we participate in its eternal nature, in its resistless course.

Heart | Music | Rest |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Day | Good | Music | Poetry |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.

Art | Music | Art |

Gustave Flaubert

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.

Listening | Music | People | Think |

Italian Proverbs

Skill or fortune will efface the spots.

Evidence | Feelings | Little | People | Understand |

Italian Proverbs

People who make the most or the loudest threats are the least likely to take action.

Feelings | Good |

Italian Proverbs

When the sun shines on thee, thou needest not care for the moon.

Feelings | Mistake |

Italian Proverbs

What the eye sees not the heart rues not.

Feelings | Mind | Mindfulness | Practice |