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

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.

Appreciation | Art | Faith | Heart | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Mind | People | Religion | Appreciation | Art |

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

Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Body | Mind |

Italian Proverbs

With patience you go beyond knowledge.

God | Harm | Ignorance | Power | Time | Truth | Will | Witness | God |

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

Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).

Focus | Knowledge | Mind | Reason | Research | Unique | Work | Following |

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

A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed. 'Hobbits!' he thought. 'Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There's something mighty queer behind this.' He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.

Fraternity | Mind | World |

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

Come, Mr. Frodo!' he cried. 'I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you and it as well. So up you get! Come on, Mr. Frodo dear! Sam will give you a ride. Just tell him where to go, and he'll go.

Power | Thought | Thought |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes.

Force | Life | Life | Loyalty | Loyalty | Mind | Trust | Think |

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

Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and L£thien

Crime | Individual | Power | World |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

No matter how piercing and appalling his insights, the desolation creeping over his outer world, the lurid lights and shadows of his inner world, the writer must live with hope, work in faith.

Joy | Light | Mind | Sense | Thinking | Thought | Time | Thought |

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

For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Evolution | Lesson | Study |

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

He led the way in under the huge branches of the trees. Old beyond guessing, they seemed. Great trailing beards of lichen hung from them, blowing and swaying in the breeze. Out of the shadows, the hobbits peeped, gazing back down the slope: little furtive figures that in the dim light looked like elf-children in the deeps of time peering out of the Wild Wood in wonder at their first Dawn.

Evolution | Future | Important | Learning | Science |

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

He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazg–l, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship.

Mind | Organization | Think |

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

I thought up an ending for my book. ?And he lives happily ever after, till the end of his days.?

Humility | Power | Strength |

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

Galadriel his sister went not with him to Nargothrond, for in Doriath dwelt Celeborn, kinsman of Thingol, and there was great love between them. Therefore she remained in the Hidden Kingdom, and abode with Melian, and of her learned great lore and wisdom concerning Middle-earth.

Power |

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

I sit beside the fire and think of all that i have seen of meadow flowers and butterflies in summers that have been of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair. I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see. For still there are so many things that I have never seen in every wood in every spring there is a different green. I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago and people that will see a world that i shall never know. But all the while I sit and think of times there were before I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.

Conversation | Guests | Power | Science | Words |

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

Eomer said, How is a man to judge what to do in such times? As he has ever judged, said Aragorn. Good and evil have not changed since yesteryear, nor are they one thing among Elves and another among Men. It is a man?s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house.

Computer | Evolution | Model | Will |

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

He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. 'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

Evolution | Learning |

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

I gave you the chance of aiding me willingly, but you have elected the way of pain.

Mind |