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

Ezra Taft Benson

We urge you to do all within your talent and means to build the kingdom of God on Earth. Always strive to sustain, support and do what is best for the kingdom of God.

Danger | Principles | Service | Danger |

Felix Adler

It is not possible to enter into the nature of the Good by standing aloof from it — by merely speculating upon it. Act the Good, and you will believe in it. Throw yourself into the stream of the world's good tendency and you will feel the force of the current and the direction in which it is setting. The conviction that the world is moving toward great ends of progress will come surely to him who is himself engaged in the work of progress.

Better | Business | Little | Pleasure | World | Business |

Ezra Taft Benson

I believe one of the most serious mistakes a President could make would be to weaken the Constitution. From the time I was a small boy I was taught that the American Constitution is an inspired document. I was also taught that the day will come when the Constitution will be endangered and hang as it were by a single thread. I was taught that we should study the Constitution. . . . I expect to continue my efforts to help protect and safeguard our inspired Constitution.

Applause | Fear | Heaven | Pleasure | World |

Ezra Taft Benson

Men who are wise, good, and honest, who will uphold the Constitution of the United States in the tradition of the Founding Fathers, must be sought for diligently. This is our hope to restore government to its rightful role. I fully believe that we can turn things around in America if we have the determination, the morality, the patriotism, and the spirituality to do so… I further witness that this land — the Americas — must be protected, its Constitution upheld, for this is a land foreordained to be the Zion of our God. He expects us as members of the Church and bearers of His priesthood to do all we can to preserve our liberty.

Comfort | Eternal | God | Life | Life | Service | Will | God |

Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Like poor immigrants throughout the ages, Jews there adjusted to the jobs no one else would do.

Cult | Existence | God | Service | God |

Felix Adler

The right for the right's sake is the motto which everyone should take for his own life. With that as a standard of value we can descend into our hearts, appraise ourselves, and determine in how far we already are moral beings, in how far not yet.

Future | Indispensable | Individual | Service | Time | Will |

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 |

Haile Selassie

Here is our opportunity and our challenge. If the nuclear powers are prepared to declare a truce, let us seize the moment to strengthen the institutions and procedures which will serve as the means for the pacific settlement of disputes among men.

Pleasure | Will |

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 |

Italian Proverbs

Saying is one thing, doing another.

Goals | People | Pleasure | Progress | Success | Work |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.

Curiosity | Error | Experience | Important | Life | Life | Nothing | Past | Pleasure | Price | Pride | Sense | Story | Teach | Time | Waiting | Will | Wrong |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

And here you will stay, Gandalf the Grey, and rest from journeys. For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman the Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colors! I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colors, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

Service | Woman |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

For it is now to us itself ancient; and yet its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote.

Service |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger; someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them...

Conversation | Energy | Life | Life | Order | Religion | Service | Understand |