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

Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

There is nothing about which I am more anxious than my country, and for its sake I am willing to die ten deaths, if that be possible.

Learning | Woman |

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government.

Action | Argument | Association | Church | Consideration | Convention | God | Hope | Nature | Will | Woman | Association | God |

Emil M. Cioran

Man started out on the wrong foot. the misadventure in paradise was the first consequence. The rest had to follow.

Action | Order |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

I have not reached you, but approaches every day yourself you my foot three rivers and even a mountain I must cross. yet a desert, another sea, the trip but I count not, when I stand before you. We proceed easily as snow we stand, the water murmuring softly. rivers, deserts, mountains and sea are traversed by us. Yet death snatches me my price, looking up, he wins.

Action | Death | Life | Life |

Emile Zola

As they have dared, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it, in full, since the normal channels of justice have failed to do so.

Action | Harm | Humanity | Law | People | Protest | Truth | Will |

Emma Goldman

Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself.

Action | Method |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Those who are beloved cannot die, because love means immortality.

Ability | Laughter | Quiet |

Emmet Fox

The first thing that we have to realize is a fact of fundamental importance, because it means breaking away from all the ordinary prepossessions of orthodoxy. The plain fact is that Jesus taught no theology whatever. His teaching is entirely spiritual or metaphysical. Historical Christianity, unfortunately, has largely concerned itself with theological and doctrinal questions which, strange to say, have no part whatever in the Gospel teaching. It will startle many good people to learn that all the doctrines and theologies of the churches are human inventions built up by their authors out of their own mentalities… There is absolutely no system of theology of doctrine to be found in the Bible; it simply is not there.

Ability | Birth | Care | Consciousness | Debt | Determination | Discovery | Life | Life | Power | Time | Will | Wisdom | Discovery | Child |

Emma Goldman

The great and inspiring aims of the Revolution became so clouded with and obscured by the methods used by the ruling political power that it was hard to distinguish what was temporary means and what final purpose. Psychologically and socially the means necessarily influence and alter the aims. The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization. In that lies the real tragedy of the Bolshevik philosophy as applied to the Russian Revolution. May this lesson not be in vain.

God | Learning | Mind | Phenomena | Science | God | Understand |

Emmet Fox

Prayer will enable you, sooner or later, to get yourself, or anyone else, out of any difficulty on the face of the earth. It is the Golden Key to harmony and happiness. To those who have no acquaintance with the mightiest power in existence, this may appear to be a rash claim, but it needs only a fair trial to prove that, without a shadow of doubt, it is a just one. You need take no one's word for it, and you should not. Simply try it for yourself, and see. God is omnipotent, and man is His image and likeness, and has dominion over all things. This is the inspired teaching, and it is intended to be taken literally, at its face value. Man means every man, and so the ability to draw on this power is not the special prerogative of the mystic or the saint, as is so often supposed, or even of the highly trained practitioner. Whoever you are, wherever you may be, the Golden Key to harmony is in your hand now. This is because in scientific prayer it is God who works, and not you, and so your particular limitations or weaknesses are of no account in the process. You are only the channel through which the divine action takes place, and your treatment will really be just the getting of yourself out of the way. Beginners often get startling results at the first time of trying, for all that is absolutely essential is to have an open mind, and sufficient faith to try the experiment. Apart from that, you may hold any views on religion, or none… We have said that the Golden Key is simple, and so it is, but, of course, it is not always easy to turn. If you are very frightened or worried it may be difficult, at first, to get your thoughts away from material things. But by constantly repeating some statement of absolute Truth that appeals to you, such as There is no power but God, or I am the child of God, filled and surrounded by the perfect peace of God, or God is love, or God is guiding me now, or, perhaps best and simplest of all, just God is with me -- however mechanical or dead it may seem at first -- you will soon find that the treatment has begun to "take," and that your mind is clearing. Do not struggle violently; be quiet but insistent. Each time that you find your attention wandering, just switch it straight back to God. Do not try to think out in advance what the solution of your difficulty will probably turn out to be. This is technically called "outlining," and will only delay the demonstration. Leave the ques tion of ways and means strictly to God. You want to get out of your difficulty -- that is sufficient. You do your half, and God will never fail to do His.

Action | Change | Life | Life | Prayer | Rest | Sense | Time |

Emmet Fox

God is still in business. All that you have to do is to realize the Presence of God where the trouble seems to be, to do your nearest duty to the very best of your ability; and to keep an even mind until the storm is over.

Action | Cause | Death | Eternal | God | Nothing | Present | Rest | God | Afraid | Child |

Emmet Fox

Refuse to tolerate anything less than harmony. You can have prosperity no matter what your present circumstances may be. You can have health and physical fitness. You can have a happy and joyous life. You can have a good home of your own. You can have congenial friends and comrades. You can have a full, free, joyous life, independent and untrammeled. You can become your own master or your own mistress. But to do this you must definitely seize the rudder of your own destiny and steer boldly and firmly for the port that you intend to make.

Ability | Absolute | Acquaintance | Action | Attention | Delay | Difficulty | Faith | God | Harmony | Man | Means | Mind | Need | Peace | Power | Prayer | Quiet | Struggle | Time | Truth | Will | Trial | God | Child | Think |

English Proverbs

A little of what you fancy does you good.

Learning | Little |

Ervin László

We rarely write the names of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon – each unique and surely of crucial significance – as here, honoring them with a capital letter. This may seem trivial, but our dislocation from nature is one of the most serious schisms in our dismembered psyche and probably the most urgent relationship we need to heal.

Action | Consciousness | Energy | Important | Intention | Law | Power |

Evgeny Morozov

Smart technologies are not just disruptive; they can also preserve the status quo. Revolutionary in theory, they are often reactionary in practice.

Ability | Daughter | Exploit | Story | Old |

Eric S. Raymond

Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.

Better | Enlightenment | Experience | Learning | Rest | Will | Worth |

Erich Segal, fully Erich Wolf Segal

Please, if one of us cries, let both of us cry. But preferably neither of us.

Ability | Defeat | Paradox |

Eric S. Raymond

Voluntary cultures that work this way are not actually uncommon; one other in which I have long participated is science fiction fandom, which unlike hackerdom explicitly recognizes egoboo (the enhancement of one's reputation among other fans) as the basic drive behind volunteer activity.

Ability | Beauty | Ugly | Beauty | Understand |

Ernest Becker

What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types—biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one's own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Every­one reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him.

Dignity | Effort | Good | Learning | Mortal | Nobility | Paradox | Time | Unique |