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

Vera Mary Brittain

I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war and the orators who talk so much about going on, no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case of mustard gas - the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great mustard colored suppurating blisters, with blind eyes, all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying their throats are closing and they know they will choke.

Husband | Talking | Wife |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

There is, then, a world immune from change. But I am not composed enough, standing on tiptoe on the verge of fire, still scorched by the hot breath, afraid of the door opening and the leap of the tiger, to make even one sentence. What I say is perpetually contradicted. Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room.

Force | Power |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.

Events | Force | Will | Wrong |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Procrastination is illogical from every viewpoint. It is like the man who wanted to cross the stream, so he sat on the bank to wait for all the water to run by.

Enough | Force |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Think for days about the following thought: Hostility serves no natural need.

Day | Force | Need | Wrong |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

True life is vertical, not horizontal.

Force |

François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand

Achilles exists only through Homer. Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory.

Folly | Little | Pride | Weakness | Work |

Victor Hugo

Go out in the world and work like money doesn't matter, Sing as if no one is listening, Love as if you have never been hurt, and Dance as if no one is watching

Desperation | Force | Hope |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

The wise person replaces toys with medicines.

Fear | Force | Lesson | Love | People | Preference | Will |

Victor Hugo

It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky... a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe.

Force | Light | Truth |

Victor Hugo

No one can keep a secret better than a child.

Force | Man |

Victor Hugo

In certain vast enterprises when the superhuman seems necessary, bravery is little less than madness.

Force | Soul | Trials |

Victor Hugo

To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.

Force | Service | Obstacle |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

It is not for me to pass judgment on those prisoners who put their own people above everyone else. Who can throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under circumstances when, sooner or later, it is a question of life or death? No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

Force | Future | Man | Mind | Peculiarity | Salvation |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

If they have come on as citadels of the gods, if they have constituted an inspired charm as their armour, if they have gathered courage through the protections for the body and the bulwarks which they have made, render all that devoid of force.

Husband | Opinion | Relationship | Wife | Will |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

It is urgent that everyone should inquire into the true, the pure and the permanent; for there is at present a delusion about values. Even the leaders of people are hugging the false hypothesis that happiness can be had by means of wealth or health, housing or clothing, or the cultivation of skills in handicraft and manufacture.

Duty | Happy | Husband | Money |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

For the body to perform to the optimum level it is necessary that all the doors work perfectly.

Day | Happy | Husband | Trust | Understanding | Wife |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

There is none to question Me if I do not act; there is nothing I would lose if I do not engage in activity. Nor have I any great urge to be active. But yet, you see Me very active. The reason is, I must be doing something all the time, for your sake, as an example, as an inspiration, as a piece of training.

Force | Ignorance | Life | Life | Man | Tragedy | Wrong |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The hypocritical and the greedy are struck down; the Messenger of Death punishes them with his club. O camel-like mind, you are my breath of life; rid yourself of the pollution of hypocrisy and doubt.

Family | Husband | Obligation |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The Siblings of Destiny meet together, and eat and spend, but these resources do not diminish; they continue to increase.

Divinity | Love | Mind | Reason | Selfishness | Weakness |