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

Eleanor Holmes Norton

Affirmative action is the most important modern anti-discrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination. No one who knows anything about the subject would say it hasn't worked. It has certainly done something, or else it wouldn't have provoked so much opposition.

Body |

Albert Einstein

The misunderstanding here is due to a faulty translation of a German text, in particular the use of the word "mystical." I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic.

Body | Soul |

William Shakespeare

ROSENCRANTZ: Do you take me for a sponge, my lord? HAMLET: Ay, sir; that soaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in the end: he keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again. ROSENCRANTZ: I understand you not, my lord. HAMLET: I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

Body |

William Shakespeare

Since I cannot prove a lover to entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determinèd to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Body | Will |

William Shakespeare

So well thy words become thee as thy wounds.

Mystery | Old |

William Shakespeare

ROSENCRANTZ: My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. HAMLET: The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing. GUILDENSTERN: A thing my lord? HAMLET: Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after!

Body | Speech | Understand |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance.

Body | Decision | Experience | Force | Friend | Little | People | Wrong | Govern | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I found that all I really wanted was to eat beautiful food and to speak as much beautiful Italian as possible. That was it. So I declared a double major, really-in speaking and in eating (with a concentration on gelato).

Body | Danger | Order | Unhappiness | Danger |

Elizabeth Gilbert

My friend Kate once went to a concert of Mongolian throat singers who were traveling through New York City on a rare world tour. Although she couldn't understand the words to their songs, she found the music almost unbearably sad. After the concert, Kate approached the lead Mongolian singer and asked, What are your songs about? He replied, Our songs are about the same things that everyone else's songs are about: lost love, and somebody stole your fastest horse.

Body | Energy | Friend | Memory | Order | Truth | Understanding | Writing |

Elizabeth Gilbert

When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company. If you are appalled, he said, then it was a devil who had visited you. If you feel lightened, it was an angel.

Body | Emotions |

Elizabeth Gilbert

There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.

Body | Energy | Fate | Life | Life | Money | Fate |

Elizabeth Gilbert

To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have 4 legs instead of 2. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.

Body | Decision | Little | People | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

When I sit in my silence and look at my mind, it is only questions of longing and control that emerge to agitate me, and this agitation is what keeps me from evolving forward.

Body | Emotions | Learn |

Elizabeth Lesser

What will matter is the good we did, not the good we expected others to do.

Beginning | Body | Earth | Heart | Mind | Pain | Solitude | Spirit | Spirituality | Time |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

She lived, we'll say, a harmless life, she called a virtuous life, a quiet life, which was not life at all (But that she had not lived enough to know)

Mystery |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Whenever I would feel such happiness my guilt alarm went off.

Body | Emotions | Learn |

Elizabeth Gilbert

There’s a crack (or cracks) in everyone…that’s how the light of God gets in.

Body | Circumstances | Energy | Fate | Life | Life | Money | Regard | Will | Words | Fate |

Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

There is one thing higher than Royalty: and that is religion, which causes us to leave the world, and seek God.

Body | Nothing | World |

Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by examining your feelings toward Him. They are indefinite and they fluctuate. But just as far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon it; you love Him. It is not natural to us sinful, ungrateful beings to prefer His pleasure to our own or to follow His way instead of our own way, and nothing, nothing but love of Him can or does make us obedient to Him.

Body | Leisure | Little | Music | Recreation | Sacrifice | Soul | Will | Worth |

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men.

Body | Change | Error | Fear | Hell | Hope | Love | Sin |