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

Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie

Percussion is the most adaptable family of instruments. The biggest challenge is to project percussion in a lyrical way.

Body | Order | Play |

Ezra Taft Benson

Tonight I will speak to you about our beloved republic and the inspired agents whom God raised up to establish the foundation upon which our liberty rests. . . . I speak to you as members of the “household of faith,” the Lord’s true church, and remind you of your solemn charge to uphold, sustain, and defend the kingdom of God. The destiny of America was divinely decreed. The events that established our great nation were foreknown to God and revealed to prophets of old. As in an enacted drama, the players who came on the scene were rehearsed and selected for their parts. Their talent, abilities, capacities, and weaknesses were known before they were born.

Abundance | Authority | Body | Books | Man | Mother | Sense | Tenderness |

Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Historians today are priests of a cult of truth, called to the service of a god whose existence they are doomed to doubt.

Excess | Fear | Individual | Modernity | People | Sense | Society | Terror | World | Society |

Ezra Taft Benson

You must keep your honor. You cannot yet speak officially for the country, but you can become informed. You can speak your mind. You may think you can do little about the national economy or the actions of our government and the moral weakness all about us, but we must all remember that the Lord has placed great responsibilities upon the elders of Israel in the preservation of our Constitution.

Body | Inspiration | Men | Mind | Time |

Ezra Taft Benson

Beloved youth, you will have your trials and temptations through which you must pass, but there are great moments of eternity which lie ahead. You have our love and our confidence. We pray that you will be prepared for the reins of leadership. We say to you, "Arise and shine forth" and be a light unto the world, a standard to others.

Health | History | Rights | Strength | System | Will |

Felix Adler

The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. They become particularly important in times of trouble. They are like the life-boats carried by ocean ships. As long as the sea is smooth and there is every appearance of a prosperous voyage, the passengers seldom take note of the boats or inquire into their sea-worthiness. But when the storm breaks and danger approaches, then the capacity of the boats and their soundness become matters of the first importance.

Society | Society |

Gustave Flaubert

Pellerin read every work on ‘sthetics, in order to find out the true theory of the Beautiful, convinced that, when he had discovered it, he would produce masterpieces. He surrounded himself with every imaginable auxiliary?drawings, plaster-casts, models, engravings; and he kept searching about, eating his heart out.

Care | Health | Man |

Gustave Flaubert

What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I am essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous, not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slap-stick comedy, but rather in the sense of ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and the most extraordinary gestures.

Body |

Gustave Flaubert

The truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Body |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

If women believed in their husbands they would be a good deal happier and also a good deal more foolish.

Body | Good |

Hans Reichenbach

Once a definition of congruence is given, the choice of geometry is no longer in our hands; rather, the geometry is now an empirical fact.

Health |

Italian Proverbs

One who wants to keep their yard tidy does not reserve a plot for the weeds.

Change | Civilization | Future | Global | Health | Inconvenient | Land | Security | Will |

Italian Proverbs

No one is bound to do impossibilities.

Care | Hate | Health |

Italian Proverbs

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

Body | Men | Mind | Reason |

Italian Proverbs

Water past will not turn the mill.

Body | Wrong |

Italian Proverbs

The soldier is well paid for doing mischief.

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

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

Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Body | Mind |