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 Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

A soft Sea washed around the House a Sea of Summer Air and rose and fell the magic Planks that sailed without a care — for Captain was the Butterfly for Helmsman was the Bee and an entire universe for the delighted crew.

Dreams | Knowledge | Literature | Pleasure | Old |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

My love for those I love — not many — not very many, but don't I love them so?

Better | Day | Good | Life | Life | Light | Pleasure | Power | Time |

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

No coward soul is mine, no trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven's glories shine, and Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear. O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life — that in me has rest, as I — undying Life — have power in Thee! Vain are the thousand creeds that move men's hearts: unutterably vain; worthless as withered weeds, or idlest froth amid the boundless main.

Mind | Pleasure |

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

Today I will not seek the shadowy region; its unsustaining vastness waxes drear; and visions rising, legion after legion, bring the unreal world too strangely near.

Change | Eternal | Little | Love | Mind | Pleasure | Will |

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

I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death... I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the Eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fullness.

Man | Pleasure |

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

I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!

Man | Pleasure |

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

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees — my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath — a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff — he's always, always in my mind — not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own being — so, don't talk of our separation again — it is impracticable.

Eternal | Little | Love | Pleasure |

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

I assure you, a tiger, or a venomous serpent could not rouse terror in me equal to that which he wakens.

Gloom | Joy | Life | Life | Mourn | Pleasure | Smile | Tears | Thought | Thought |

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

He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands and remained rapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely 'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!' 'For shame, Heathcliff!' said I. 'It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.' 'No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain.

Pleasure | Universe |

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

I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.

Pleasure |

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

My great thought is in himself. If all else perished and he remained I should still continue to be and if all else remained and he were annihilated the universe would turn into a mighty stranger. I would not seem apart of it.

Change | Eternal | Little | Love | Pleasure | Thought | Time | Universe | Will | World | Thought |

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

My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels — its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour found; measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound — o, dreadful is the check — intense the agony when the ear begins to hear and the eye begins to see; when the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again, the soul to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain. Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less; the more that anguish racks the earlier it will bless; and robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine if it but herald death, the vision is divine —

Change | Eternal | Little | Love | Mind | Pleasure | Time | Will |

Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

In the I [moi], the identity of Being reveals its nature as enchainment, for it appears in the form of suffering and invites us to escape. Thus escape is the need to get out of oneself, that is, to break that most radical and most unalterably binding of chains, the fact that the I is the oneself [soi-même].

Belief | Distinguish | Knowledge | Life | Life | Pleasure |

Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved. But love goes beyond the beloved... The possibility of the Other appearing as an object of a need while retaining his alterity, or again, the possibility of enjoying the Other... this simultaneity of need and desire, or concupiscence and transcendence... constitutes the originality of the erotic which, in this sense, is the equivocal par excellence.

Absence | Pleasure | Self |

Evelyn Mills Duvall

Just how advisable is it for a farm girl to date a city boy? The chief concern here seems to be her ability to handle a date who is more sophisticated than she is. The old story of the traveling salesman and the farmer’s daughter has some basis in the tendency of certain urban males to try to exploit the presumably more naïve country girl.

Pleasure |

Eva Zeisel

When you begin your work, nothing exists. When it is finished it looks as if it just happened, spontaneously, effortlessly, convincingly. It looks as though it had been there all along.

Feelings | Heart | Love | Pleasure | Following |

Ezekial Hopkins

Patience is the ballast of the soul, that will keep it from rolling and tumbling in the greatest storms: and he, that will venture out without this to make him sail even and steady will certainly make shipwreck, and drown himself; first, in the cares and sorrows of this world; and, then, in perdition.

Pleasure | Wisdom |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

Let us... quietly accept our times, with the firm conviction that just as much good can be done today as at any time in the past, provided only that we have the will and the way to do it.

Exploit | Genius | Pleasure | Public | Temptation | Work | Talent | Temptation |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life

Life | Life | Pleasure | Wrong | Think |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Bigotry is an odd thing. To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure you are right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence. Continence is the foe of heresy.

Destroy | Evil | Pleasure |