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

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame. All animal breeders know how difficult it is to maintain a fine strain. The universe seems to be in a conspiracy to encourage the endless reproduction of peasants and Socialists, but a subtle and mysterious opposition stands eternally against the reproduction of philosophers.

Love |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.

Controversy | Love | People |

Gustave Flaubert

Those around him were students like himself. They talked about their professors, and about their mistresses. Much he cared about professors! Had he a mistress? To avoid being a witness of their enjoyment, he came as late as possible.

Love |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

If the work of the average man required half the mental agility and readiness of resource of the work of the average prostitute, the average man would be constantly on the verge of starvation.

Love |

Gustave Flaubert

The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment. She was in love.

Power | Right |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.

Love | Mistrust |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

Hate | Little | Think |

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own.

Love | Mother |

Gustave Flaubert

Without ideality, there is no grandeur; without grandeur there is no beauty. Olympus is a mountain. The most swagger monument will always be the Pyramids. Exuberance is better than taste; the desert is better than a street-pavement, and a savage is better than a hairdresser!

Love | Plan |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

In the duel of sex, woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

Hate |

Hamilton Wright Mabie

Genius is intensity of life; an overflowing vitality which floods and fertilizes a continent or a hemisphere of being; which makes a nature many-sided and whole, while most men remain partial and fragmentary.

Behavior | Example |

Haile Selassie

Twenty-seven years ago, as Emperor of Ethiopia, I mounted the rostrum in Geneva, Switzerland, to address the League of Nations and to appeal for relief from the destruction which had been unleashed against my defenseless nation, by the Fascist invader.

Husband | Love |

Hannah Arendt

It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.

Love |

Hannah Arendt

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.

Action |

Hans Rosling

Health cannot be bought at the supermarket. You have to invest in health. You have to get kids into schooling. You have to train health staff. You have to educate the population.

Love | Old |

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

Rain on the day you get married brings good luck.

Consciousness | Power | Understand |

Italian Proverbs

Step by step one goes to Rome.

History |