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

Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

But I, Caesar, have not sought to amass wealth by the practice of my art, having been rather contented with a small fortune and reputation, than desirous of abundance accompanied by a want of reputation.

Beauty | Dignity | Style | Beauty |

Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire

You have a much better life if you wear impressive clothes.

Beauty | People | Personality | Style | Will | Beauty | Think |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.

Body | Music | Sound | Style |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

My vocabulary dwells deep in my mind and needs paper to wriggle out into the physical zone. Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle. I have rewritten, often several times, every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.

Accident | Day | Infancy | Mother | Nothing | Style | Writing |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

To think that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she would—invariably, with icy precision—plump for the former.

Art | Impression | Rage | Style | Absurdity | Art |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

The great consolation in life is to say what one thinks.

Nothing | Public | Style |

Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

I have a terrible need of – dare I say the word? – religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.

Giving | Rest | Style | Time |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighborhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.

Genius | Good | Ideas | Need | Story | Style | Will |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

For if there are (at a venture) seventy-six different times all ticking in the mind at once, how many different people are there not – Heaven help us – all having lodgment at one time or another in the human spirit?

Destroy | Dreams | Earth | Life | Life | Man | Soul | Style | Truth |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess – he was a woman.

Genius | Good | Ideas | Immortality | Need | Rest | Story | Style | Will |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

Hunger | Individual | Knowing | People | Style | Will |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

There are the stars--doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky. Scholars haven't settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings out there. Just chalk... or fire. Only this one is straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself. Strain's so bad that every sixteen hours everybody lies down and gets a rest.

Style |

Hugh Blair

I will not go so far as to say that the improvement of taste and of virtue is the same, or that they may always be expected to co-exist in an equal degree. More powerful correctives than taste can apply are necessary for reforming the corrupt propensities which too frequently prevail among mankind. Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart. At the same time, this cannot but be admitted, that the exercise of taste is, in its native tendency, moral and purifying.

Character | Imagination | Style |

William Shakespeare

But since the affairs of men rests still incertain, let's reason with the worst that may befall.

Better | Style |

William James

But such a straight identification of religion with any and every form of happiness leaves the essential peculiarity of religious happiness out. The more commonplace happinesses which we get are 'reliefs,' occasioned by our momentary escapes from evils either experienced or threatened. But in its most characteristic embodiments, religious happiness is no mere feeling of escape. It cares no longer to escape. It consents to the evil outwardly as a form of sacrifice — inwardly it knows it to be permanently overcome. ... In the Louvre there is a picture, by Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his foot on Satan's neck. The richness of the picture is in large part due to the fiend's figure being there. The richness of its allegorical meaning also is due to his being there — that is, the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

Day | Death | Insight | Little | Man | Method | Mind | Patience | Psychology | Style | Success | Superiority | Tenacity | Thought | Uncertainty | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Thought |

William James

There is no being capable of a spiritual life who does not have within him a jungle. Where the wolf constantly HOWLS and the OBSCENE bird of night chatters endlessly.

Little | Method | Science | Style | Work |

Dugald Stewart

Inclination is another word with which will is frequently confounded. Thus, when the apothecary says, in Romeo and Juliet,— “My poverty, but not my will, consents; Take this and drink it off; the work is done.” the word will is plainly used as synonymous with inclination; not in the strict logical sense, as the immediate antecedent of action. It is with the same latitude that the word is used in common conversation, when we think of doing a thing which duty prescribes, against one’s own will; or when we speak of doing a thing willingly or unwillingly.

Acquaintance | Attainment | Books | Correctness | Grace | Language | Lying | Men | Merit | Purity | Reading | Style | Taste | Writing |

Edwin Percy Whipple

Everybody knows that fanaticism is religion caricatured, and yet, with many, contempt of fanaticism is regarded as a sign of hostility to religion.

Model | Style |

Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki

The world know it not; but you, Autumn, I confess it: your wind at night-fall stabs deep into my heart.

Beauty | Change | Men | Precept | Style | Tradition | Trifles | Will | Beauty |

Edwin Percy Whipple

As men neither fear nor respect what has been made contemptible, all honor to him who makes oppression laughable as well as detestable. - Armies cannot protect it then; and walls that have remained impenetrable to cannon have fallen before a roar of laughter or a hiss of contempt.

Imitation | Model | Style |