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

Gustave Flaubert

None of us can ever express the exact measure of our needs, or our ideas, or our sorrows, and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when we long to inspire pity in the stars.

Play |

Gustavo GutiƩrrez

If there is no friendship with them [the poor] and no sharing of the life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals.

Think |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

Hannah Arendt

In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.

Evil |

Hannah Arendt

Love, in distinction from friendship, is killed, or rather extinguished, the moment it is displayed in public.

Evil | Good |

Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland

No Winter lasts forever, no Spring skips its turn. April is a promise that May is bound to keep, and we know it.

Evil |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

No government, of its own motion, will increase its own weakness, for that would mean to acquiesce in its own destruction... governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. It?s one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.

Evil | Man | Pleasure | Understanding |

Hannah Whitall Smith

Sight is not faith, and hearing is not faith, neither is feeling faith; but believing when we neither see, hear nor feel is faith; and everywhere the Bible tells us our salvation is to be by faith. Therefore we must believe before we feel, and often against our feelings, if we would honor God by our faith.

Evil |

Hannah Arendt

Power corrupts... when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before. The will to power... far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one.

Evil | Malice | Think |

Hannah Whitall Smith

To be a mother is the greatest vocation in the world. No being has a position of such great power and influence. She holds in her hands the destiny of nations, for to her is necessarily committed the making of the nation?s citizens.

Evil |

Italian Proverbs

One who wants to keep their yard tidy does not reserve a plot for the weeds.

Change | Civilization | Future | Global | Health | Inconvenient | Land | Security | Will |

Italian Proverbs

Poor men's money and cowards' weapons are often flourished.

Self |

Italian Proverbs

Step by step one goes to Rome.

History |

Italian Proverbs

Of what does not concern you say nothing, good or bad.

Consideration | Man | Nothing |

Italian Proverbs

No news is good news.

Innovation |

Italian Proverbs

Of the wealth of the world each has as much as they take.

Affliction | Gloom | Light |

Italian Proverbs

The dog that has been beaten with a stick is afraid of its shadow.

Beginning | Circumstances | Risk |

Italian Proverbs

She who is born a beauty is born betrothed.

Italian Proverbs

No sooner is the law made than its evasion is discovered.

Evil | Men |

Italian Proverbs

One today is worth two tomorrows.

Society | Success | Society |