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

Ethiopian Proverbs

One who plants grapes by the road side, and one who marries a pretty woman, share the same problem.

Day | Time | Will | Child |

Eudora Welty

The very greatest mystery is in unsheathed reality itself.

Life | Life | Reverence |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

HOGAN: No, I wouldn't think it, but my motto in life is never trust anyone too far, not even myself.

Money | Wants | Understand |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

I hold more and more surely to the conviction that the use of masks will be discovered eventually to be the freest solution of the modern dramatist's problem as to how -- with the greatest possible dramatic clarity and economy of means -- he can express those profound hidden conflicts of the mind which the probings of psychology continue to disclose to us.

Dirty | Little | Marriage | Pain | Play | Time | Ugly | Think |

Eudora Welty

I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. From the minute I reached our house, I started to read. Every book I seized on, from "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-a-While" to "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," stood for the devouring wish to read being instantly granted. I knew this was bliss, knew it at the time. Taste isn't nearly so important; it comes in its own time.

Gratitude | Knowledge | Parents | Reading | Time |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

If one is a philosopher, he can do nothing else than philosophize; or, if he does something else, he will do it with a view to securing the freedom he needs for philosophizing.

Reason | World |

Eudora Welty

I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.

Books | Taste |

Euripedes NULL

God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it.

Euripedes NULL

Of all the evils that infest a state, a tyrant is the greatest; his sole will commands the laws, and lords it over them.

Daughter | Evil | Father | God | Gold | Good | Heaven | Mind | Nature | Nothing | Order | Wife | Will | God |

Euripedes NULL

Joint undertakings stand a better chance when they benefit both sides.

Man | Wise |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

People | Prison | Public | Will |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Julia used to say, 'Poor Sebastian. It's something chemical in him.' That was the cant phrase of the time, derived from heaven knows what misconception of popular science. 'There's something chemical between them' was used to explain the overmastering hate or love of any two people. It was the old concept of determinism in a new form. I do not believe there was anything chemical in my friend.

Life | Life | Principles |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

He did not fail in love, but he lost the joy of it.

Time |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Old boy, said Grimes, you're in love. Nonsense! Smitten? said Grimes. No, no. The tender passion? No. Cupid's jolly little darts? No. Spring fancies, love's young dream? Nonsense! Not even a quickening of the pulse? No. A sweet despair? Certainly not. A trembling hope? No. A frisson? a Je ne sais quoi? Nothing of the sort. Liar! said Grimes.

Journey | Mind |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

I've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quite despair of me in the end.

Life | Life |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Thus strategists hesitate over the map, the few pins and lines of coloured chalk, contemplating a change in the pins and lines, a matter of inches, which outside the room, out of sight of the studious officers, may engulf the past, present and future in ruin or life. She was a symbol to herself then, lacking the life of both child and woman; victory and defeat were changes of pin and line; she knew nothing of war.

Journey |

Evelyn Underhill

Grace is God himself, his loving energy at work within his church and within our souls.

Problems | Quiet |

Evelyn Underhill

There is no place in my soul, no corner of my character, where God is not.

Action | Beginning | Experience | God | Need | Order | Present | Spirit | God |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

A necklace of pearls on a white neck. We had lost the sense of discovery which had infused the anarchy of our first year. I began to settle down... the old house in the foreground, the rest of the world abandoned and forgotten; a world of its own of peace and love and beauty.

Books | Dirty | Literature |

Felix Adler

The bitter, yet merciful, lesson which death teaches us is to distinguish the gold from the tinsel, the true values from the worthless chaff.

Conscience | Evil | Fidelity | Men | Reform | Right | Will | Wrong |