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

Ernest Becker

The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count.

Ability | Character | Consciousness | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Terror | World |

Ernest Becker

In other words, it is not so much a question as to whether we are able to cure a patient, whether we can or not, but whether we should or not.

Ability | Character | Comfort | Consciousness | Defense | Fear | God | Ideas | Joy | Madness | Man | Meaning | Means | Men | People | Promise | Purpose | Purpose | Thought | Wants | God | Thought |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

It was strange how easy being tired enough made it.

Ability | Day | Good | Life | Life | Nothing | People | Thinking | Truth | Will | Work | Writing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be

Ability | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Money | Nothing | Price | Reward | Thought | Work | World | Thought |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

This was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other.

Ability | Death | Despise | Harm | Necessity | Responsibility | Talent |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.

Ability | Man |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

We are, I believe, at the moment in grave danger of missing the 'path to perfection'.

Ability | Consciousness | Ego | Knowledge | Man | Nothing |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

Socialists should insist on using the nationalized industries not simply to out-capitalize the capitalists—an attempt in which they may or may not succeed—but to evolve a more democratic and dignified system of industrial administration, a more humane employment of machinery, and a more intelligent utilization of the fruits of human ingenuity and effort.

Ability | Courage | Growth | Man |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed.

Ability | Absolute |

Eustace Budgell

Those who have searched into human nature observe that nothing so much shows the nobleness of the soul, as that its felicity consists in action. Every man has such an active principle in him that he will find out something to employ himself upon, in whatever place or state of life he is posted.

Conversation | Discretion | Giving | Good | Love | Man | Nothing | Sense |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

We class schools, you see, into four grades: Leading School, First-rate School, Good School, and School. Frankly, said Mr Levy, School is pretty bad... (Part One, Chapter One)

Ability | Friends |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim. . . Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. Rats, he said; stinking curs. They are all running away.

Discretion | Temper |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly perfectly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. In the same way many human institutions are turned over to grossly inferior men. This is true, for example, of most universities, and of all great newspapers.

Better | Discretion |

Italian Proverbs

On every small pretext the wolf seizes the sheep.

Ability | Fault | Mind | Fault |

Italian Proverbs

Never let the bottom of your purse or of your mind be seen.

Ability | Focus |

Italian Proverbs

No good lawyer ever goes to court himself.

Ability | Balance | Technology | Work |

Italian Proverbs

Substance is not enough, accident is also required.

Ability | Coercion | Power |

Italian Proverbs

The fear of war is worse than war itself.

Ability | Reason | Story | Thinking |

Italian Proverbs

The devil is bad because he is old.

Ability | Age | Art | Control | Culture | Humor | Memory | Need | Time | Work | World | Art |