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

English Proverbs

It is best to be on the safe side.

English Proverbs

It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

English Proverbs

The work shows the workman.

Fahad Al-Attiya

This is the situation in Qatar: … We only have two days of water reserve, we import 90 percent of our food, and we only cultivate less than one percent of our land.

Power |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.

Fear | Nothing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgment.

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

You felt, in spite of all bureaucracy and inefficiency and party strife something that was like the feeling you expected to have and did not have when you made your first communion. It was a feeling of consecration to a duty toward all of the oppressed of the world which would be as difficult and embarrassing to speak about as religious experience and yet it was as authentic as the feeling you had when you heard Bach, or stood in Chartres Cathedral or the Cathedral at León and saw the light coming through the great windows; or when you saw Mantegna and Greco and Brueghel in the Prado. It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something that you had never known before but that you had experienced now and you gave such importance to it and the reasons for it that you own death seemed of complete unimportance; only a thing to be avoided because it would interfere with the performance of your duty. But the best thing was that there was something you could do about this feeling and this necessity too. You could fight.

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.

Day | Fear | Land | Light | Quiet | Safe | Time |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one'... (The man who first said that) was probably a coward... He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them.

Man |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

In those days, there was no money to buy books.

Heart | Time |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist.

Good | Mind | Quiet |

Estonian Proverbs

Who sows evil shall reap perdition.

Will |

Eudora Welty

There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.

Light |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

As the Greeks sensibly believed, should you get to know yourself, you will have penetrated as much of the human mystery as anyone need ever know.

Detachment | Knowledge | Unhappiness |

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty

Time |

Eugenio Montale

Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light, to the feet, thin ice that cracks; and so may no one touch you who loves you.

Reason |

Euripedes NULL

Humility, a sense of reverence before the sons of heaven — of all the prizes that a mortal man might win, these, I say, are wisest; these are best.

Courage | Failure | Fortune | Good | Failure |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

EVELYN WAUGH: How do you get your main pleasure in life, Sir William? SIR WILLIAM BEVERIDGE: I get mine trying to leave the world a better place than I found it. WAUGH: I get mine spreading alarm and despondency and I get more satisfaction than you do.

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity.

Dreams | Fighting | Love | Paradise | Forgive |