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

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

For the spiritual sense of the Word treats everywhere of the spiritual world, that is, of the state of the church in the heavens, as well as in the earth; hence the Word is spiritual and Divine.

Sense |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man.

Abundance | Body | Conversation | Eternal | Experience | Life | Life | Means | Meditation | Money | Need | People | Reading | Spirit | Time | World | Think | Understand |

Emil M. Cioran

For the man who has got in the nasty habit of unmasking appearances, event and misunderstanding are synonyms. To make for the essential is to throw up the game, to admit one is defeated.

Earth | Existence | Life | Life | Reason | Time |

Dorothy Parker

There was nothing separate about her days. Like drops on the window-pane, they ran together and trickled away.

Cost | Reason |

Ellen Glasgow, fully Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

Nothing in life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.

Experience | History |

Ellen Key, fully Ellen Karolina Sofia Key

Corporal punishment is as humiliating for him who gives it as for him who receives it; it is ineffective besides. Neither shame nor physical pain have any other effect than a hardening one.

Experience | Child |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye; much sense the starkest madness. ’T is the majority in this, as all, prevails....Much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye; much sense the starkest madness. ’T is the majority in this, as all, prevails. Assent, and you are sane; demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous, and handled with a chain.

Madness | Majority | Sense |

Emil M. Cioran

To think is to take a cunning revenge in which we camouflage our baseness and conceal our lower instincts.

Sense |

Emma Goldman

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved.

Enough | Sense |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return - the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame - shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.

Art | Change | Danger | Darkness | Doubt | Dreams | Grief | Guile | Hate | Heart | Hope | Liberty | Life | Life | Pain | Quiet | Reason | Suffering | Suspicion | Thankfulness | Trust | Truth | World | Danger | Art |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.

Experience |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

For that mist may break when the sun is high and this soul forget its sorrow and the rose ray of the closing day may promise a brighter ‘morrow.

Corruption | Enough | Experience | Grief | Hope | Mankind | Mind | Mortal | Trust | Truth | Youth | Youth | Think |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

But I begin to fancy you don't like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me. (Catherine Linton, nee Earnshaw)

Distress | Earth | Ends | Harmony | Impatience | Music | Struggle | Truth |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

My walk home was lengthened by a diversion in the direction of the kirk. When beneath its walls, I perceived decay had made progress, even in seven months - many a window showed black gaps deprived of glass; and slates jutted off, here and there, beyond the right line of the roof, to be gradually worked off in coming autumn storms. I sought, and soon discovered, the three head-stones on the slope next the moor - the middle one, gray, and half buried in heath - Edgar Linton's only harmonized by the turf and moss, creeping up its foot - Heathcliff's still bare. I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

Agony | Sense | Soul | Torture | Vision | Will | Think |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

Two words would comprehend my future -- death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell.

Ends |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

You are a dog in the manger, Cathy, and desire no one to be loved but yourself!

Change | Eternal | Existence | Little | Love | Self | Sense | Time | Universe | Will |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

Heathcliff, make the world stop right here. Make everything stop and stand still and never move again. Make the moors never change and you and I never change.

Reason |

Emma Goldman

Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment.

Arrogance | Belief | Duty | Fortune | Infancy | Kill | Little | Lord | Mind | Patriotism | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Superiority | Child |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling—to manifestations of mutual kindliness. (Mr. Lockwood)

Cruelty | Love | Reason | Revenge | Thinking | Will | Cruelty | Forgive |

Emma Goldman

‎Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against society, that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship.

Discontent | Earth | Nothing | Reason | Rebellion | Training |