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

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

She wants to go home, but nobodys home. That's why she lies, broken inside. With no place to go, no place to go, to dry her eyes, broken inside...

Children | Fate | Husband | Pain | Reason | Tenderness | Thought | Fate | Thought |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Death | Delusion | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Love | Reason | Think |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the anonymous roller that pressed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap.

Imitation | Individual | Inspiration | Land | Language | Light | Man | Means | Necessity | Reason | Submission | Time | Unique | Waste |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Suddenly, gentlemen of the jury, I felt a Dostoevskian grin dawning (through the very grimace that twisted my lips) like a distant and terrible sun.

Need | Reason |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

The rich philistinism emanating from advertisements is due not to their exaggerating (or inventing) the glory of this or that serviceable article but to suggesting that the acme of human happiness is purchasable and that its purchase somehow ennobles the purchaser.

Death | Reason | Think |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an American businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead.

Day | Gold | Luxury | Memory | Necessity | Pity | Public | Reason | Will | Child | Old |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

It was decided by the University of Coimbre that the sight of several persons being slowly burned in great ceremony is an infallible secret for preventing earthquakes.

Eternity | Kill | Little | Man | Need | Reason | Learn |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

Many historians take pleasure in putting into the mouths of princes what they have neither said nor ought to have said.

Reason |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

This, to use an American term in which discovery, retribution, torture, death, eternity appear in the shape of a singularly repulsive nutshell, was it.

Children | Darkness | Fate | Husband | Joy | Pain | Reason | Tenderness | Thought | Fate | Loss | Thought |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

To a joke, then, I owe my first gleam of consciousness—which again has recapitulatory implications, since the first creatures on earth to become aware of time were also the first creatures to smile.

Reason |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

Nothing could be smarter, more splendid, more brilliant, better drawn up than two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, cannons, formed a harmony such as never been heard in hell.

Reason | Religion |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.

Kill | Nothing | People | Reason | War |

Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

For great things do not done (sic) just happen by impulse but are a succession of small things linked together.

Danger | Reason | Thinking | Danger |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Eternity | Hypothesis | Reason | Understand |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

What is not in nature can never be true.

Reason |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

The United States is speaking out of both sides of its mouth,

Reason |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

The passions are the winds that fill the sails of the vessel. - They sink it at times; but without them it would be impossible to make way. - Many things that are dangerous here below, are still necessary.

Fighting | Kill | Parents | People | Reason |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

And yet, the only exciting life is the imaginary one.

Day | Earth | Knowing | Love | Mind | Nothing | Reason | Talking | Thinking | Will | Woman |

Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

Indigo with terra sienna, Prussian blue with burnt sienna, really give much deeper tones than pure black itself. When I hear people say ‘there is no black in nature’, I sometimes think, ‘There is no real black in colors either’. However, you must beware of falling into the error of thinking that the colorists do not use black, for of course as soon as an element of blue, red, or yellow is mixed with black, it becomes a gray, namely, a dark, reddish, yellowish, or bluish gray.

Future | Reason |

Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing.

Good | Life | Life | Light | Love | People | Pity | Reason | Sentiment | Society | Sympathy | Society |