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

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

Death | Life | Life |

Italian Proverbs

None so deaf as those who will not hear.

Beauty | Gloom | Humanity | Power | Soul | Spirit | Will | Beauty |

Italian Proverbs

Thank you, pretty pussy, was the death of my cat.

Death | Good | Hypothesis | Individual | Phenomena | Sense | Loss |

Italian Proverbs

The loquacity of fools is a lecture to the wise.

Death |

Italian Proverbs

When the head aches all the members languish.

Death | Order |

Italian Proverbs

Very seldom does any good thing arise but there comes an ugly phantom of a caricature of it.

Birth | Childhood | Death | Irony | Paradox | Religion | Time | Work |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

And here he was, a little halfling from the Shire, a simple hobbit of the quiet countryside, expected to find a way where the great ones could not go, or dared not go. It was an evil fate.

Freedom | God | Order | Soul | Struggle | Wants | God |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Being a cult figure in one's own lifetime I am afraid is not at all pleasant. However I do not find that it tends to puff one up: in my case at any rate it makes me feel extremely small and inadequate. But even the nose of a very modest idol cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense.

Death | Marriage | Need | Rites | Crisis |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

Life implies constant activity, and the vital principle was accordingly regarded as something essentially active, constantly controlling and therefore interfering with physical tendencies towards disintegration of organic structure, and building up new organic structure in the process of nutrition and reproduction.

Body | Death | Evidence | Life | Life | Time |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we *can* suppose.

Death |