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

Elihu Root

War comes today as the result of one of three causes: either actual or threatened wrong by one country to another, or suspicion by one country that another intends to do it wrong ... or, from bitterness of feeling, dependent in no degree whatever upon substantial questions of difference. . . . The least of these three causes of war is actual injustice.

Brotherhood | Charity | Desire | Duty | Individual | Judgment | Love | Malice | People | Progress | Prosperity | Regard | Sentiment | Happiness |

Eliza Cook

How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start, when memory plays an old tune on the heart.

Courage | Devotion | Future | Guile | Intrigue | Life | Life | Man | Popularity | Principles | Public | Righteousness | Skill | Youth | Following | Youth | Intellect | Teacher |

Eleanor Holmes Norton

I don't for a moment believe that women have suffered the same kind of injustices that blacks have -- women have never been enslaved. But still, many of the psychological and economic problems are the same. This country would go bankrupt in a day if the Supreme Court suddenly ordered the powers-that-be to pay back wages to children of slaves and to the women who've worked all their lives for half wages or no pay.

Family | Future | Government | Men | Government |

Elif Safak

Sometimes ... yaralanıveririz so suddenly. But every wound will heal itself. Eventually heals, top off. Stored in the eyes. Does not want to be seen because there is no wound. As long as they advocate the wound pupils. Because if pupils are injured, you cannot look the world in the same way ever again. You start to see the bad side of everything you look at. Contaminants that have remained hidden even run away from his eyes. Did not see things that other people feel the same anymore and you do not love them anymore. Uncomfortable. They cannot look you in the same way again. This is close to you, so no one wants to see. Picture the same image, in fact, changing your eyes. If you walk out the picture, everything remains as before, not everyone is comfortable. Personally, I think it is best to go in such situations. Top go to the top. Out of spite.

Consciousness | Duty | God | Individual | Morality | Rule | God | Learn |

Elif Safak

Hell is the here and now. Heaven too. Stop being afraid of hell and dream of paradise, because the one and the other is set in the present moment. Every time you fall in love, to ascend to heaven. Every time we hate, envy or confront someone, fall right into hellfire.

Hell | Present | Time |

Elias Canetti

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

Future | Survival | Thought | Thought |

William Shakespeare

SAMPSON: My naked weapon is out. Quarrel, I will back thee. GREGORY: How! turn thy back and run? SAMPSON: Fear me not. Gregory: No, marry; I fear thee!

Age | Battle | Enough | Famous | Lord | Present | Sound | Time |

William Shakespeare

She is a woman, therefore may be woo'd; she is a woman, therefore may be won; she is Lavinia, therefore must be lov'd. What, man! more water glideth by the mill than wots the miller of; and easy it is of a cut loaf to steal a shive.

Courage | Fame | Honor | Present | Time |

William Shakespeare

Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter, dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty, beyond what can be valued, rich or rare, no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor; as much as child e'er loved, or father found, a love that makes breath poor and speech unable.

Behavior | Cause | Children | Contempt | Counsel | Desire | Duty | Father | Fear | Friend | Good | Grace | Heaven | Honor | Love | Marriage | Mind | Obedience | Pity | Pleasure | Right | Sacred | Time | Wife | Will | Wise | Wit | Woman | Friendship | Counsel | Friends |

William Shakespeare

Such is my love, to thee I so belong, That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.

Duty | Woman |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

Future | Life | Life | Space | Happiness |

William Shakespeare

So, of his gentleness, Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me from mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

Business | Cause | Day | Death | Duty | Father | God | Greatness | Guilt | Law | Life | Life | Man | Men | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Sin | Soul | Teach | Time | War | Business | God | Guilty | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I felt like I was some kind of primitive spring-loaded machine, placed under far more tension than it had ever been built to sustain, about to blast apart at great danger to anyone standing nearby. I imagined my body parts flying off my torso in order to escape the volcanic core of unhappiness that had become: me.

Duty | Sense | Happiness |

William Shakespeare

Such it is as are those dulcet sounds in break of day that creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear and summon him to marriage.

Distinguish | Evil | God | Good | Noise | Power | Present | God |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument.

Day | Future | Heart | Love | Lying | Words |

Elizabeth Gilbert

The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in ones lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same ole addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma ( and also of western psychology, by the way)- take care of the problem now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering-that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding-there's where you'll find heaven.

Balance | Darkness | Difficulty | Light | Madness | Present |

Elizabeth Gilbert

There's a reason we refer to leaps of faith - because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.

God | Present | Reason | Right | God |

Elizabeth Gilbert

There is a theory that if you yearn sincerely enough for a Guru, you will find one. The universe will shift, destiny's molecules will get themselves organized and your path will soon intersect with the path of the master you need.

God | Present | Reason | Right | God |

Elizabeth Gilbert

When you set out in the world to help yourself, sometimes you end up helping Tutti.

Duty | Life | Life | Sense | Happiness |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The tyrant should take heed to what he doth, since every victim-carrion turns to use, and drives a chariot, like a god made wroth, against each piled injustice.

Duty | Life | Life | Love | Man | Service | Sound | World |