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 |

Gustave Flaubert

She recognized the passion and the pain whereof she had all but died. The voice of the heroine seemed but the echo of her own heart, and the lovely illusion before her, part and parcel of her life. But no one on earth had ever loved 'her' with such a love as that.

Wants |

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 |

Gustave Flaubert

We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.

Wants | Think |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air?that progress made under the shadow of the policeman?s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave? In any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct to side with the citizen? I am against all efforts to make men virtuous by law.

Creativity | Energy | Enthusiasm | Freedom | Good | People |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.

Pleasure | Understanding |

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 Arendt

There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedience's taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.

Wants |

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

Penny and penny laid up will be many.

Diversity | People | Understanding | Understand |

Italian Proverbs

She who is born a beauty is born betrothed.

Italian Proverbs

One today is worth two tomorrows.

Society | Success | Society |

Italian Proverbs

The devil is bad because he is old.

Ability | Age | Art | Control | Culture | Humor | Memory | Need | Time | Work | World | Art |

Italian Proverbs

The sun is still beautiful, though ready to set.

Wants | Work |