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

W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Art | Character | Culture | Money | Talking | Writing | Art |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Life is a romantic business. It is painting a picture, not doing a sum; but you have to make the romance, and it will come to the question how much fire you have in your belly.

Business | Character | Life | Life | Question | Romance | Will |

Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne

Not years but experiences age us; hence man would be the unhappiest of creatures were he a diligent pupil of experience. That each new generation and each new era starts out from the cradle is what keeps mankind eternally young.

Age | Era | Experience | Man | Mankind | Wisdom |

Samuel Butler

A man's work whether in music, painting or literature is always a portrait of himself.

Literature | Man | Music | Wisdom | Work |

Samuel Butler

Communication of all kinds is like painting - a compromise with impossibilities.

Wisdom |

Edgar Degas, born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

Means | Wisdom |

Edna Ferber

Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death.

Death | Defeat | Life | Life | Love | Wisdom | Writing |

Joseph Gerrald

Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented, the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish; but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil.

Aid | Discontent | Era | Eternal | Folly | Freedom | History | Madness | People | Principles | Purity | Reverence | Truth | Tyranny | Will | Wisdom |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Good | Judgment | Sound | Wisdom | Writing |

Charles Lindbergh, fully Charles Augustus Lindbergh, nicknamed "Slim,""Lucky Lindy" and "The Lone Eagle"

Every era opens with its challenges, and they cannot be met by elaborating methods of the past.

Era | Past | Wisdom |

Wright Morris

When writing is good, everything is symbolic, but symbolic writing is seldom good.

Good | Wisdom | Writing |

Simonides, aka Simonedes of Ceos NULL

Painting is silent poetry, poetry painting that speaks.

Poetry | Wisdom |

Howard Sparks

The art of our era is not art, but technology. Today Rembrandt is painting automobiles; Shakespeare is writing research reports.

Art | Era | Research | Technology | Wisdom | Writing | Art |

Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne

Both music and painting add a spirit to devotion, and elevate the ardor.

Devotion | Music | Spirit | Wisdom |

E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White

I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn’t have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born upright. The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out what the score is.

Beauty | Free press | Man | Order | Wisdom | Writing | Beauty |

Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

At the time of writing I never think of what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me [at that] given moment. The result is that I have grown from truth to truth.

Present | Question | Time | Truth | Writing | Think |

Paul Gardner

A painting is never finished. It simply stops in interesting places.