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 Gould Davis

Proof that the penis is a much later development than the female vulva is found in the evidence that the male himself was a late mutation from an original female creature. For man is but an imperfect female. Geneticists and physiologists tell us that the Y chromosome that produces males is a deformed and broken X chromosome — the female chromosome. All women have two X chromosomes, while the male has one X derived from his mother and one Y from his father. It seems very logical that this small and twisted Y chromosome is a genetic error — an accident of nature, and that originally there was only one sex — the female.

Man | Method | Need | Woman |

Ellen Goodman

What do I want to take home from my summer vacation? Time. The wonderful luxury of being at rest. The days when you shut down the mental machinery that keeps life on track and let life simply wander. The days when you stop planning, analyzing, thinking and just are. Summer is my period of grace.

Little | Men | Need | Writing | Think |

Emil M. Cioran

The curtain of the universe is moth-eaten, and through its holes we see nothing now but mask and ghost.

Beauty | Death | Grace | Illusion | Innocence | Light | Sadness | Beauty |

Ellen Key, fully Ellen Karolina Sofia Key

The emancipation of women is practically the greatest egoistic movement of the nineteenth century, and the most intense affirmation of the right of the self that history has yet seen.

Light | Understand |

Emil Nolde

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

Need | Work |

Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

This is the final test of the truth or untruth of a constructive or disintegrating philosophy of life. What increases man's sense of power, and therefore, for him, the content of life, is true. What tends to the diminishing of the store of moral resiliency and of the energy needed for resisting as well as for onward pushing is corrupting, and therefore marked by falsehood's taint.

Future | Instinct | Man | Need | Truth |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man.

Abundance | Body | Conversation | Eternal | Experience | Life | Life | Means | Meditation | Money | Need | People | Reading | Spirit | Time | World | Think | Understand |

Emil M. Cioran

Getting up in the middle of the night, I walked around my room with the certainty of being chosen and criminal, a double privilege natural to the sleepless, revolting or incomprehensible for the captives of daytime logic.

Existence | Forgiveness | Happy | Light | Soul | Will | Forgiveness |

Ellen Key, fully Ellen Karolina Sofia Key

Why is the heart that is broken considered so much more valuable than the one or the two who must cause the pain lest they themselves perish?

Need |

Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

In the common sense of the word, Judaism is not a religion, it is not a system of dogmas, of sacramental grace; it is not a bundle of rites and ceremonies; it is not a road to happiness in the hereafter; it is not a scheme of salvation from original sin; it does neither stand nor fall with our views as to the character of those books we call sacred, and as to their authorship. But it is a message to the world that righteousness must be its own reward, and is of that force which builds the world and shapes the courses of men.

Agnostic | Belief | Charity | God | Man | Mercy | Need | Pity | Thinkers | God | Agnostic |

Emil M. Cioran

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

Need |

Emile Zola

The vision that had emerged from the invisible was returning to the invisible. It was no more an appearance that was fading away, having created an illusion. All is but a dream. And, at the peak of happiness, Angélique had vanished, in the faint breath of a kiss.

Evil | Light | Time | Will | Trial |

Emile Zola

Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.

Dirty | Good | Light | Old |

Emile Zola

The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.

Accuracy | Dignity | Discipline | Enough | Justice | Land | Love | Means | Need | Obedience | Piety | Position | Respect | Tomorrow | Will | Respect |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.

Genius | Light |

Emile Zola

Boredom was at the root of Lazare's unhappiness, an oppressive, unremitting boredom, exuding from everything like the muddy water of a poisoned spring. He was bored with leisure, with work, with himself even more than with others. Meanwhile he blamed his own idleness for it, he ended by being ashamed of it.

Need |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

My life had stood--a Loaded Gun-- In Corners--till a Day The Owner passed--identified-- And carried Me away-- And now We roam in Sovereign Woods-- And now We hunt the Doe-- And every time I speak for Him-- The Mountains straight reply-- And do I smile, such cordial light Upon the Valley glow-- It is as a Vesuvian face Had let its pleasure through-- And when at Night--Our good Day done-- I guard My Master's Head-- 'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's Deep Pillow--to have shared-- To foe of His--I'm deadly foe-- None stir the second time-- On whom I lay a Yellow Eye-- Or an emphatic Thumb-- Though I than He--may longer live He longer must--than I-- For I have but the power to kill, Without--the power to die.

Immortality | Life | Life | Need | Parting |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

Need |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Perception of an object costs precise the Object's loss—

Need | Oppression |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I see thee better in the dark, I do not need a light. The love of thee a prism be excelling violet. I see thee better for the years that hunch themselves between, the miner’s lamp sufficient be to nullify the mine. And in the grave I see thee best—its little panels be a-glow, all ruddy with the light I held so high for thee! What need of day to those whose dark hath so surpassing sun, it seem it be continually at the meridian?

Better | Need |