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

Gustave Flaubert

Love... must come suddenly, with great thunderclaps and bolts of lightning -- a hurricane from heaven that drops down on your life, overturns it, tears away your will like a leaf, and carries your whole heart off with it into the abyss.

Gustavo GutiƩrrez

Charity is today a 'political charity.'. . . it means the transformation of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. This transformation ought to be directed toward a radical change in the foundation of society, that is, the private ownership of the means of production.

Age | Light |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.

Opinion |

Italian Proverbs

Of this world each man has as much as he takes.

Life | Life | Men |

Italian Proverbs

The gardener's dog does not eat lettuce and will not let others eat it.

Age |

Italian Proverbs

t is better to ride a donkey that carries you than a horse that throws you.

Change | Opinion | Public |

Italian Proverbs

The devil is bad because he is old.

Ability | Age | Art | Control | Culture | Humor | Memory | Need | Time | Work | World | Art |

Italian Proverbs

The thief's wife does not always laugh.

Energy | Family | Little | Need | People | Regulation | Old |

Italian Proverbs

There is no beard so well shaven but another barber will find something more to shave from it.

Better | Opinion | Question | World |

Italian Proverbs

What shall I say when it is better to say nothing?

Body | Men | Mind | Reason |

Italian Proverbs

The soldier is well paid for doing mischief.

Administration | Decision | Global | Health | Policy | Right | Rights | Struggle |

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

The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilizations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.

Age | Boys | Magic | Time | Vision |

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

As I lay in prison, Sam, I tried to remember the Brandywine, and Woody End, and The Water running through the mill at Hobbiton. But I can't see them now.

Age | Control | Education | Need | Old age | Poverty | Slavery | World | Old |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Accidents, try to change them -it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.

Compassion | Family | Learn |

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

And now leave me in peace for a bit I don't want to answer a string of questions while I am eating. I want to think''Good Heavens' said Pippin. 'At breakfast?

Diet | Family | Good |

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

All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But... I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.

Age | Books | Children | Dirty | Life | Life | Receive | Work |

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

Any corner of that county (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way 'home' to me, as no other part of the world is. There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that.

Existence | Hope | Important | Man | Woman |

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

And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to.

Business | Children | Debt | Extreme | Important | Question | Slavery | Business | Understand |

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

And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.

Men |