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

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

If I had caused the cloud, it was my duty to make an effort to dispel it.

Silence | Work |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

But I begin to fancy you don't like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me. (Catherine Linton, nee Earnshaw)

Distress | Earth | Ends | Harmony | Impatience | Music | Struggle | Truth |

Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

Obsession is irreducible to consciousness, even if it overwhelms it. In consciousness it is betrayed, but thematized by a said in which it is manifested. Obsession traverses consciousness counter-current-wise, is inscribed in consciousness as something foreign, a disequilibrium, a delirium.

Silence |

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out.

Depression | Life | Life | Mourning | Music | Vice |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Remember everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong.

Ambition | Belief | Economics | Little | Mind | Music | Patriotism | People | Sense | Thought | Ambition | Old | Thought |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

Why are atoms so small?... Many examples have been devised to bring this fact home to an audience, none of them more impressive than the one used by Lord Kelvin: Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water, then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter thoroughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if you then took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules.

God | Music | Question | Science | Time | Unity | God | Old |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

The task of educating and feeding youngsters, the task of educating the army, the task of distributing the lands of the former absentee landlords to those who laboured every day upon that same land without receiving its benefits, are accomplishments of social medicine.

Darkness | Individuality | Light | Little | Silence | Space |

Estonian Proverbs

The cat who snoops around will feed his kitten.

Silence |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

These suppositions admitted; in order to recollect the familiar ideas, it would be sufficient to be capable of giving attention to some of our fundamental ideas, with which they are connected. Now this is always feasible; because, so long as we are awake, there is not an instant in which our constitution, our passions, and our situation, do not occasion some of those perceptions which I call fundamental.

Doubt | Impression | Music |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

Our wants are all dependent upon one another, and the perceptions of them might be considered as a series of fundamental ideas, to which we. might reduce all those which make a part of our knowledge.

Imagination | Music |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

Thus the most natural order of ideas required, that the government should precede the verb: they said, for example, fruit to want.

Music | Reason |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

The progress of the operations, whose analysis and origin have been here explained, is obvious. At first, there is only a simple perception in the mind, which is no more than the impression it receives from external objects.

Language | Music |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid of love, I who love love? Why must I hide myself in self-contempt in order to understand? Why was I born without a skin, O God, that I must wear armor in order to touch or to be touched?

Beauty | Earth | Grace | Life | Life | Love | Music | Beauty | Afraid |

Eugene Peterson

The story behind the writing of The Message (this was especially interesting to me).

God | Silence | Words | God |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

What we have been saying in regard to imagination and memory, must be applied to contemplation, according as it is referred to either. If it be made to consist in retaining the perceptions; before the use of instituted signs it has only a habit which does not depend on us: but it has none at all, if it be made to consist in preserving the signs themselves.

Design | Fame | Knowledge | Mankind | Memory | Music | Poetry | Religion | Time | Wants |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

I distinguish therefore two sorts of perceptions among those we are conscious of; some which we remember at least the moment. After others which we forget the very moment they are impressed. This distinction is founded on the experience just now given. A person highly entertained at a play shall remember perfectly the impression made on him by a very moving scene, though he may forget how he was affected by the rest of the entertainment.

Music | Prejudice | Regard | Time |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

In any case, write what you know will always be excellent advice to those who ought not to write at all.

Books | Church | Meaning | Silence | Talking | Time | Writing |

Euripedes NULL

For the good, when praised, feel something of disgust, if to excess commended.

Quiet | Reserve | Silence |

Euripedes NULL

For chance fights ever on the side of the prudent.

Quiet | Reserve | Silence |

Euripedes NULL

Youth holds no society with grief.

Silence |