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

Elizabeth Gilbert

I always thought we only had two choices in our lives when it came to pizza crust—thin and crispy, or thick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thin and doughy? Holy of holies! Thin, doughy, strong, gummy, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise.

Absence | Children | Desire | Enough | People | Reason | Regret | Thinking | Witness | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Has become my thoughts more like neighbors veterans, annoying, but they have become dear, there is room for all of us in this neighborhood.

Distress | Effort | Enough | Good | Soul | Will | World | Crisis | Happiness |

Elizabeth Gilbert

My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: I want a spiritual teacher.

People | Will | World | Happiness | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It's safe. Let go.

Madness |

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate; As the voyage along thru life; 'Tis the will of the soul That decides its goal, And not the calm or the strife.

Conscience | Earth | Good | Happy | Labor | Laughter | Man | People | Wealth | Will | Worry |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being and let God be God in you.

Church | Sense |

Emil M. Cioran

From denial to denial, his existence is diminished: vaguer and more unreal than a syllogism of sighs, how could he still be a creature of flesh and blood? Anemic, he rivals the Idea itself; he has abstracted himself from his ancestors, from his friends, from every soul and himself; in his veins, once turbulent, rests a light from another world. Liberated from what he has lived, unconcerned by what he will live; he demolishes the signposts on all his roads, and wrests himself from the dials of all time. I shall never meet myself again, he decides, happy to turn his last hatred against himself, happier still to annihilate - in his forgiveness - all beings, all things.

Absence | Authority |

Emil M. Cioran

Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.

Absence | Death | Nothing | Reality |

Dorothy Parker

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

Dread | Dreams | Hate | Love | Peace | Soul | Spirit | Thought | World | Thought |

Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

The doctrine of man as creator, as I can easily show to such as can think philosophically, necessarily leads to an assumption of a greater creative force immanent in nature. . . . Human life, weak as it is, shadowlike as undoubtedly it is, fleet-footed as it is, gains strength in the thought that the All-life lives and supports the individual life, which is not wiped away as the little ripplets are in the broader stream.

Civilization | Offense | Sin | World |

Emil M. Cioran

We must learn how to explode! Any disease is healthier than the one provoked by a hoarded rage.

Absence | Censure | Excess |

Emile Zola

Albine now yielded to him, and Serge possessed her.

Folly | Security | Truth |

Emile Zola

What everyone agreed was not very nice, was the way Clémence had carried on. Obviously, she wasn't the kind of girl you'd ask again: she'd ended up showing off everything she'd got, and she'd puked all down one of the muslin curtains and completely ruined it. At least the men did go into the street to do it; Lorilleux and Poisson, when they felt queer, managed to dash as far as the pork-butcher's shop. Breeding always tells.

Folly | Security | Truth |

Emma Goldman

Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. An army and navy represent the people's toys.

Individual | Majority | Struggle |

Emma Goldman

Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation, one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment. It is a change of form only, not of substance, as so tragically proven by Russia.

Discovery | Freedom | Man | Personality | Society | Work | Society | Discovery |

Emma Goldman

Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king.

Earth | Force | Gold | Life | Life | Little | Love | Magic | Man | Power | World |

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

Why did you betray your own heart Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. ... You loved me - then what right had you to leave me? Because ... nothing God or satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of you own will, did it. I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - oh God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave? [...] I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer - but yours! How can I?

Doubt | Looks | Reputation | Shame |

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

The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in - let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of LINTON? I had read EARNSHAW twenty times for Linton) - 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window.

Dependence | Ignorance | Land | Right |

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

Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe — I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!

Reputation |

Emma Goldman

In modern capitalism economic exploitation rather than political oppression is the real enemy of the people.

Ideas | Passion | Qualities | Revolution |