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

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

And yet, let the nature of these perceptions be what it will, and let them be produced as they will, if we look amongst them for the idea of extension, for instance, of a line, of an angle, and any other figure, we shall find it in that repository very clearly and distinctly.

Abstract | Circumstances | Mind | Perception | Power | Think |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

The true reason why this universe appears to some scientists as mysterious is that, mistaking existential, that is, metaphysical, questions for scientific ones, they ask science to answer them. Naturally, they get no answers. Then they are puzzled, and they say that the universe is mysterious.

Absolute | Existence | God | Knowledge | Need | Scripture | Truth | God | Understand |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

A single word, which depicts nothing, would not have been sufficiently expressive to have immediately succeeded the mode of speaking by action: this was a language so well proportioned to rude capacities, that it could not be supplied by articulate sounds, without accumulating expressions one upon the other.

Knowing | Power |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

He (a new philosopher) still needs to be taught, not this time philosophy, but to philosophize.

Day | Knowledge | Principles | Right | Time | Intellect |

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 |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

A credulous, religious-minded fool, as I've pointed out! And he carried his credulity into the next period of his life, where he believed in one social or philosophical Ism after another, always on the trial of Truth! He was never courageous enough to face what he really knew was true, that there is no truth for men, that human life in unimportant and meaningless. No. He was always grasping at some absurd new faith to find and excuse for going on!

Knowledge | Little | Sense |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

What we have been saying in regard to imagination and memory, must be applied to contemplation, according as it is referred to either. If it be made to consist in retaining the perceptions; before the use of instituted signs it has only a habit which does not depend on us: but it has none at all, if it be made to consist in preserving the signs themselves.

Design | Fame | Knowledge | Mankind | Memory | Music | Poetry | Religion | Time | Wants |

Eudora Welty

All experience is an enrichment rather than an impoverishment.

Beauty | Pity | Power | Beauty |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

As the Greeks sensibly believed, should you get to know yourself, you will have penetrated as much of the human mystery as anyone need ever know.

Detachment | Knowledge | Unhappiness |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.

Deeds | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Vision | Wise | Work | Deeds |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).

Darkness | Death | Defeat | Earth | Failure | Hope | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mystery | Nothing | Power | Reading | Sadness | Will | Failure |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The African is here and to stay. How came he to our shores? Ask your grandfathers, Mr. Anonymous, and if they will tell the truth you will or should blush for the crimes.

Labor | Mission | Power | Public | World |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, "Well, so-and-so will like this," which you do when you're younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.

Power |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

As a rule hogs are only raised where they have good health and grow fat. Any old place will do to raise human beings.

Capitalism | Cause | Destroy | Duty | Good | Power | Time | Traitor | Treason | World | Worry |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The united vote of those who toil and have not will vanquish those who have and toil not, and solve forever the problems of democracy.

Courage | Injustice | Injustice | Intelligence | Justice | Men | Power | Right | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wrong |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The collective ownership and control of industry and its democratic management in the interest of all the people. That is the demand.

Control | Government | Power | Government |

Eugenio Montale

You do not remember the house of the customs officers from the upward overhanging the cliff: desolate awaits you from the night when entered it the swarm of your thoughts restless and stopped there.

Men | Position | Power | Victim |

Euripedes NULL

The fiercest anger of all, the most incurable, is that which rages in the place of dearest love.

Power | Time |

Euripedes NULL

The worst, the least curable hatred is that which has superseded deep love.

Good | Power | Wealth |

Euripedes NULL

I hold that mortal foolish who strives against the stress of necessity.

Fate | Power | Fate |