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

Emmet Fox

Remember that God is always at the end of the road ahead, but at the end of the road behind you will only find yourself.

Circumstances | Destiny | Good | Happy | Health | Present | Prosperity | Friends |

Emma Goldman

What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine!

Democracy | Free press | Free speech | Opinion | Safe | Speech | War | World |

English Proverbs

An evil chance seldom comes alone.

English Proverbs

Children and fools must not play with edged tools.

English Proverbs

To go through fire and water (through thick and thin).

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

Challenge |

Estelle R. Ramey, born Stella Rosemary Rubin

In man, the shedding of blood is always associated with injury, disease, or death. Only the female half of humanity was seen to have the magical ability to bleed profusely and still rise phoenix-like each month from the gore.

Man | Men |

Eric S. Raymond

Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.

Capacity | Individual | Machines | Power | Talking |

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

But some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint - like a heartbeat. And pure love why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there.

Mother | Work | Child |

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

Grandmas defy description. They really do. They occupy such a unique place in the life of a child. They can shed the yoke of responsibility, relax, and enjoy their grandchildren in a way that was not possible when they were raising their own children. And they can glow in the realization that here is their seed of life that will harvest generations to come.

Ceremony | Day |

Ernest Becker

What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types—biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one's own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Every­one reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him.

Dignity | Effort | Good | Learning | Mortal | Nobility | Paradox | Time | Unique |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.-men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep-hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.

Confidence | Light | Need | Question | Youth | Youth |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.

Art | Heart | Art |

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

You were our first miracle. You were the genesis of a marriage, the fulfillment of love, the promise of our infinity...You were the beginning.

Mother |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

For what are we born if not to aid one another?

Thought | Thought |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Nobility | Nothing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Oh Daddy, canÂ’t you give her something to make her stop screaming? asked Nick. No. I havenÂ’t any anesthetic, his father said. But her screams are not important. I donÂ’t hear them because they are not important.

Men | Practice |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Now Tom was - the hell with that, he said to himself. It is something that happens to everybody. I should know about that by now. It is the only thing that is really final, though.

Books |

Esaias Tegnér

A glimpse of Breidablick, whose walls are light as e'en the silver on the cliff it shone; of dark blue steel its columns azure height and the big altar was one agate stone. It seemed as if the air upheld alone its dome, unless supporting spirits bore it, studded with stars Odin's spangled throne, a light inscrutable burned fiercely o'er it; in sky-blue mantles, sat the gold-crowned gods before it.

Lord |

Estonian Proverbs

Who sows a wind will reap a storm.

Will |