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

Hannah Arendt

Power corrupts... when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before. The will to power... far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one.

Evil | Malice | Think |

Hannah Whitall Smith

To be a mother is the greatest vocation in the world. No being has a position of such great power and influence. She holds in her hands the destiny of nations, for to her is necessarily committed the making of the nation?s citizens.

Evil |

Italian Proverbs

The gallows will have its own at last.

Kill | Knowledge |

Italian Proverbs

No sooner is the law made than its evasion is discovered.

Evil | Men |

Italian Proverbs

No one perceives where the shoe pinches but he who wears it.

Efficiency | Knowledge | Money | World |

Italian Proverbs

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

Experience | Nature | Organization |

Italian Proverbs

When a wife sins the husband is never innocent.

Education | Ideas | Justify | Knowledge | Learning | Literature | Need | People | Question | Study | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Value |

Italian Proverbs

Who has patience sees his revenge.

Enough | Nature |

Italian Proverbs

When gold speaks every tongue is silent.

Evil | God | Hope | Justice | Will | World | God |

Italian Proverbs

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

Children | Day | Depression | Despair | Effort | Knowledge | Life | Life | Parents | Suicide | World | Wrong | Child |

Italian Proverbs

The right hand is slave to the left.

Business | Nature | Worth | Business |

Italian Proverbs

Where there is nothing to gain, there is a lot to lose.

Example | Knowledge | Light | Think |

Italian Proverbs

With so many roosters crowing, the sun never comes up.

Insight | Nature | Teach | Unique | World |

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

After some time he felt for his pipe. It was not broken, and that was something. Then he felt for his pouch, and there was some tobacco in it, and that was something more. Then he felt for matches and he could not find any at all, and that shattered his hopes completely.

Insight | Knowledge | Model | Theories |

Italian Proverbs

You surround your vineyard with thorns - place doors and locks on your mouth. You will never have a friend if you must have one without faults.

Change | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | Reality | Religion | Truth | Will |

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

Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).

Focus | Knowledge | Mind | Reason | Research | Unique | Work | Following |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

Experience | God | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | Sense | God |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

We must beware the revenge of the starved senses, the embittered animal in its prison.

Father | Knowledge | Love | Time |

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

All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.

Nature | Technology | Time |