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

Wilhelm Reich

"What right do you have to tell me things?" I can see this question in your apprehensive look. I hear this question from your impertinent mouth, Little Man. You are afraid to look at yourself, you are afraid of criticism, Little Man, just as you are afraid of the power they promise you. You would not know how to use this power. You dare not think that you ever might experience yourself differently: free instead of cowed; open instead of tactical; loving openly instead of like a thief in the night. You despise yourself Little Man. You say: "Who am I to have an opinion of my own, to determine my own life and to declare the world to be mine?" You are right: Who are you to make a claim to your life?

Curiosity | Doctrine | Man | Question | Intellect |

Wilhelm Reich

'Mysticism' here means, in the literal sense, a change of sensory impressions and organ sensations into something unreal and beyond this world.

Little | Man | Responsibility | Society | Truth | Wants | Society | Intellect |

Wilhelm Reich

Not until man is willing to recognize his animal nature - in the good sense of the word - will he create genuine culture.

Eternal | Law | Past |

Wilhelm Reich

No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural. This is valid, no matter whether we speak in terms such as “God,” “Natural Law,” “Cosmic Primordial Force,” “Ether” or “Cosmic Orgone Energy.”

Achievement | Culture | Instinct | Man | Morality | Time | Unity | Will | Work |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose......of silence?

Joy | Life | Life | Love | Soul | Will | Words | Intellect |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you nonetheless and filter and fibre your blood.

Argument | Custom | God | Knowledge | Little | Men | Mind | Music | Peace | Promise | Spirit | God |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Man | Intellect |

Walter Brueggemann

After we have done our best work and vigorously pursued our most passionate modes of reading, the text—and the God featured in the text— remain inscrutable and undomesticated. Partly the reason for that inscrutability and lack of domestication is that the text in its final form is complex and pluralistic, hosting a variety of traditioning and interpreting voices that become normative traditions. More than that, however, the inscrutability and lack of domestication in the text are a consequences of the God attested in these pages who is Holy Other.

Meaning | Power | Reality | Society | System | Society |

Walter Lippmann

Liberalism regards man as improvable but not perfectible.

Care | Instinct | Soul | Will |

Walter Bagehot

History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.

Heart | Soul | Intellect |

Walter Mondale, fully Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale

Do you want to tear your life apart and get rid of everything you've known as a lifestyle? Like seeing your family? Being with your friends? A fishing trip? A hunting trip? A night's sleep?

Instinct |

Walter Savage Landor

It is delightful to kiss the eyelashes of the beloved--is it not? But never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them.

Intellect |

Walter Savage Landor

What is reading but silent conversation.

Heart | Model | Nothing | Companionship | Intellect |

Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

Where grapholects exist, "correct" grammar and usage are popularly interpreted as the grammar and usage of the grapholect itself to the exclusion of the grammar and usage of the other dialects.

Machines | Sense | Technology | Television | Thinking | Writing |

Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater

The Renaissance of the fifteenth century was, in many things, great rather by what it designed that by what it achieved.

Poetry | Present | Intellect |

Walter Lippmann

You must not complicate your government beyond the capacity of its electorate to understand it.

Care | Honesty | Instinct | Men | Soul | Will |

Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change. With Wrigley chewing gum, it's the lack of change that appeals to me. I don't think it is going to be hurt by the Internet. That's the kind of business I like.

Discipline | Sound | Intellect |

Washington Irving

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town.

Alms | Angels | Earth | Giving | God | Good | Man | Right | Following | God |

Wayne Muller

Equanimity is the ability to experience the changes in our lives, circumstances, and feelings and still remain calm, centered and unmoved. The image most often used to illustrate the quality of equanimity is that of a mountain. The mountain sits there as the sun shines on it, the rain drenches it, it is covered with snow and struck by lightning. Through it all, through all the changing conditions, the mountain remains unwavering. As we cultivate equanimity within ourselves, we learn to be more like the mountain, finding that place of strength and courage within ourselves that enables us to withstand the slings and arrows of being human without feeling overwhelmed by fear.

Fear |

Wayne Muller

The greatest barrier to own healing is not the pain, sorrow or violence inflicted upon us as children. Our greatest hindrance is our ongoing capacity to judge, to criticize, and to bring tremendous harm to ourselves. If we can harden our heart against ourselves and meet our most tender feelings with anger and condemnation, we simultaneously armor our heart against the possibility of gentleness, love and healing.

Birth | God | Sense | Teach | God |