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

Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

I had one brother almost of my own age, whom I loved best... We used to read the lives of the Saints together. And when I read of the martyrdoms which they suffered for the love of God, I used to think that they had bought their entry into God's presence very cheaply. Then I fervently longed to die like them, not out of any conscious love for Him, but in order to attain, as quickly as they had, those joys which, as I read, are laid up in Heaven. I used to discuss with my brother ways and means of becoming martyrs, and we agreed to go together to the land of the Moors, begging our way for the love of God, so that we might be beheaded there. I believe that our Lord had given us courage enough even at that tender age, if only we could have seen a way. But our parents seemed to us a very great hindrance.

Authority | Courage | God | Good | Lord | Strength | God | Afraid |

Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

In time there is something indivisible - namely, the instant; and there is something else which endures - namely, time. But in eternity the indivisible now stands always still.

Authority | Order | War |

Samuel Adams

It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control ... The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them.

Applause | Authority | Individual | Loyalty | Loyalty | Mistake | Object | Success |

Samuel Adams

Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last resort.

Authority | Obligation | Rights | Child |

Salvatore Quasimodo

My readers at that time were still men of letters; but there had to be other people waiting to read my poems.

Acceptance | Man | Opposition | Poverty | Redemption |

Samuel Adams

The Opinion of others I very little regard, & have a thorough Contempt for all men, be their Names Characters & Stations what they may, who appear to be the irreclaimable Enemies of Religion & Liberty.

Authority | Law | Liberty | Man | Nature | Power | Will |

Samuel Clarke

Many who are very just in their dealings between man and man will yet be very fraudulent or rapacious with regard to the public.

Expectation | God | Life | Life | Mind | Opposition | Reality | Reward | Truth | God | Expectation |

Samuel Gompers

I beg to say in reply that if it be decided by both the colored and white workers of your city [Austin] that it would tend to the best interests of the movement to organize separate central bodies there is no reason why such a course should not be pursued.

Authority | Effort | Improvement | Law | Men | Opportunity | Guilty |

Samuel Gompers

To-day we are living in an age of combinations and trusts, and the individual workman is as weak against the combination of wealth as would be a straw in a cyclone. It is essential that the United States Government, where it can exercise, should exercise its power to protect the weak against the rapacity of the strong.

Force | Opposition | Rights |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggression [aggressiveness].

Authority | Mistake | Nothing | Science |

Sidney Hook

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.

Indifference | Nothing | Opposition | Smile | Thought | Words | Approval | Thought |

Sidney Hook

Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person that they will not betray to stay alive.

Absurd | Authority | Justice | Logic | Model | Policy | World | Following |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Humor is a means of obtaining pleasure in spite of the distressing effects that interface with it.

Individual | Life | Life | Majority | Opposition | Power |

Simone Weil

During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature’s spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.

Opposition | Solitude | Will |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The impression forces itself upon one that men measure by false standards, that everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself, and admires others who attain them, while undervaluing the truly precious thing in life.

Authority | Majority | Need | People |

Simone Weil

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Authority | Majority | Men | Nothing | Obedience | People | World |

Simone Weil

In order to obey God, one must receive his commands. How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism? To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled — that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.

Authority | Control | Intelligence | Order |

Simone Weil

Contemplating an object fixedly with the mind, asking myself, 'What is it?' without thinking of any other object or relating it to anything else for hours on end.

Authority | Choice | Conquest | Constraint | Culture | Enough | Freedom | Liberty | Need | Obedience | Power | Soul | Truth |