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

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.

Heart |

Hans Hoffman

Color is a plastic means of creating intervals... color harmonics produced by special relationships, or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions, just as we differentiate in music between counterpoint and harmony.

Heart |

Italian Proverbs

Revenge a hundred years old has still its milk-teeth.

Politics | Vision | Will |

Italian Proverbs

Never let people see the bottom of your purse or of your mind.

Care | Heart |

Italian Proverbs

The danger past, the saint cheated.

Children | Memory |

Italian Proverbs

Summer is the mother of the poor.

Democracy | Good | Means | Vision |

Italian Proverbs

One devil knows another.

Truth | Vision |

Italian Proverbs

The same fire purifies gold and consumes straw.

Vision | Work |

Italian Proverbs

The man who loves is easy of belief.

Heart |

Italian Proverbs

To promise and give nothing is comfort for a fool.

Decision | Think |

Italian Proverbs

The more one knows, the less one believes.

Heart | Love | Will | Think |

Italian Proverbs

Where there is nothing to gain, there is a lot to lose.

Example | Knowledge | Light | Think |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilizations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.

Age | Boys | Magic | Time | Vision |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.

Appreciation | Art | Faith | Heart | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Mind | People | Religion | Appreciation | Art |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in our irritation, from... the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled carrots and Beluga caviar, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them.

Absolute | Compassion | Equity | Heart | Honor | Suffering | Work | World |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow in the waters that was soon lost in the West. There he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-Earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart.

Technology | Vision | Will |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun; and behold! the Shadow has departed! I will be a Shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.

Art | Heart | Language | Religion | Art |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

I should think so-in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Makes you late for dinner! I can't see what anybody sees in it.

Capacity | Vision |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Frodo stood up. He had laughed in the midst of all his cares when Sam trotted out the old fireside rhyme of Oliphant, and the laugh had released him from hesitation. 'I wish we had a thousand oliphants with Gandalf on a white one at their head,' he said. 'Then we'd break a way into this evil land, perhaps. But we've not; just our own tired legs, that's all. Well, Smeagol, the third turn may turn the best. I will come with you.

Argument | Business | Heart | Nothing | Progress | Rest | Business |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing!

Beauty | Heart | Love | Beauty |