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

Thomas Merton

I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.

Destiny | God | Man | Race | Sense | World | God | Happiness |

Thomas Paine

The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.

Ends | Religion |

William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley

I am the Reaper. All things with heedful hook Silent I gather. Pale roses touched with the spring, Tall corn in summer, Fruits rich with autumn, and frail winter blossoms— Reaping, still reaping— All things with heedful hook Timely I gather. I am the Sower. All the unbodied life Runs through my seed-sheet. Atom with atom wed, Each quickening the other, Fall through my hands, ever changing, still changeless. Ceaselessly sowing, Life, incorruptible life, Flows from my seed-sheet. Maker and breaker, I am the ebb and the flood, Here and Hereafter, Sped through the tangle and coil Of infinite nature, Viewless and soundless I fashion all being. Taker and giver, I am the womb and the grave, The Now and the Ever.

Fate | Regret | Time | Will | Fate |

William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley

Ballade of Dead Actors - Where are the passions they essayed, And where the tears they made to flow? Where the wild humours they portrayed For laughing worlds to see and know? Othello's wrath and Juliet's woe? Sir Peter's whims and Timon's gall? And Millamant and Romeo? Into the night go one and all. Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed? The plumes, the armours -- friend and foe? The cloth of gold, the rare brocade, The mantles glittering to and fro? The pomp, the pride, the royal show? The cries of war and festival? The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow? Into the night go one and all. The curtain falls, the play is played: The Beggar packs beside the Beau; The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid; The Thunder huddles with the Snow. Where are the revellers high and low? The clashing swords? The lover's call? The dancers gleaming row on row? Into the night go one and all.

Age | Chance | Duty | Fear | Gold | Need | Politics | Time | War | Wit |

Waldo Frank

We go forth all to seek America. And in the seeking we create her. In the quality of the search shall be the nature of the America that we created.

Beginning | Faith | Friend | Land | Life | Life | Light | Meaning | Time | Will | Work | World | Old |

William Blake

Mutual Forgiveness of each vice, Such are the Gates of Paradise, Against the Accuser’s chief desire, Who walk’d among the stones of fire. Jehovah’s Finger wrote the Law; Then wept; then rose in zeal and awe, And the dead corpse, from Sinai’s heat, Buried beneath His Mercy-seat.

Art | Change | Art |

William Blake

The Divine Image - To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love All pray in their distress; And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is God, our Father dear, And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is man, His child and care. For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress. Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace. And all must love the human form, In heathen, Turk, or Jew; Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too.

Father | Light |

William Blake

True superstition is ignorant honesty and this is beloved of God and man.

Repose |

William Cowper

Dress drains our cellar dry, and keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires and introduces hunger, frost, and woe, where peace and hospitality might reign.

William Cowper

Sin let loose speaks punishment at hand.

Sound |

Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

How terrible it was to love people when you could not really share their lives!

Life | Life |

Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live; and if at forty one can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.

Wilhelm Reich

The vital energies regulate themselves naturally without compulsive duty or compulsive morality — both of which are sure signs of existing antisocial impulses.

Culture | Man | Morality | Time | Unity | Will | Work |

Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

There's nothing funnier than the human animal.

Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

The fun is in always building something. After it's built, you play with it awhile and then you're through. You see, we never do the same thing twice around here. We're always opening up new doors.

Era |

Wilhelm Reich

Don't run. Have the courage to look at yourself!

Better | Chance | Death | Destiny | Law | Life | Life | Longing | Love | Men | Nature | People | Quiet | Reform | Trust | Will | Work | World | Child | Learn | Old | Think | Understand |

Wilhelm Reich

No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural. This is valid, no matter whether we speak in terms such as “God,” “Natural Law,” “Cosmic Primordial Force,” “Ether” or “Cosmic Orgone Energy.”

Achievement | Culture | Instinct | Man | Morality | Time | Unity | Will | Work |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.

Looks | Men | Nothing | Rest |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth, I dream'd that was the new city of Friends, nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest, it was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, and in all their looks and words.

Dreams |