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

Emma Goldman

Free love? As if love is anything but free! 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. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.

Body | Earth | Fear | Glory | Life | Life | Man | Morality | Pain | Religion | Self-denial | Sorrow | Soul | Struggle |

Emma Goldman

In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values.

Love |

Emma Goldman

Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods; nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since gods began.

Earth | Love | Magic | Man | Power | World |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul--BOOKS.

Death | Love |

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

A perfect misanthropist's heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A

Earth | Heaven | Light | Little | Love | Rest | Restraint | Truth |

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

I obeyed, so far as to quit the chamber; when, ignorant where the narrow lobbies led, I stood still, and was witness, involuntarily, to a piece of superstition on the part of my landlord which belied, oddly, his apparent sense. He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears. 'Come in! come in!' he sobbed. 'Cathy, do come. Oh, do - ONCE more! Oh! my heart's darling! hear me THIS time, Catherine, at last!' The spectre showed a spectre's ordinary caprice: it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the light.

Love |

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

If he were in my place and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that became my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him... Never would have missed her company, while she wanted. At the moment the affection disappeared, I would have ripped the heart and drank his blood. But until then... would have let me die in pieces before touching a hair on his head.

Love | Power | Soul |

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

No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall.

Faith | God | Life | Life | Power | Soul | God |

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

You and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence apart from us. What would be the sense of self has been created, if contained only in myself? The big disappointments I had were the dislikes of Heathcliff, and I felt each from the beginning: what is it makes me live. If everything else was over, and he remained, I would continue to exist, and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would become a huge unknown. My love for Linton is like the foliage of the forest. Time will change it, I'm sure, just as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks: provides a little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!

Heart | Love |

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

Although he loved her with all the strength of his miserable being, not love as much in eighty years as I do in a day

Soul |

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

I love who kills me! But how I can forgive anyone who kills you?

Love |

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

It’s no company at all, when people know nothing and say nothing,’ she muttered.

Love |

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

Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! How can I bear it? was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish: they did not melt.

Agony | Soul | Think |

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

And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But, till then--if you don't believe me, you don't know me--till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!

Better | Hate | Love | People |

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

He turned, as he spoke, a peculiar look in her direction, a look of hatred unless he has a most perverse set of facial muscles that will not, like those of other people, interpret the language of his soul.

Love |

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

I cried so much for him as for her, sometimes we have compassion for creatures that do not have this feeling not for themselves nor for others.

Better | Care | Love | Nothing |

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

I make you my queen. Whatever happens out there, here, you will always be my queen. Heathcliff to Catherine (Hey, Heathcliff, women don't want to be queens, just loved.)

Love | Forgive |

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

I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.

Love |

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

If he loved with all the strength of his soul mean, not love in eighty years as I do in a day.

Love |

Emma Goldman

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it.

Freedom | Love | Right |