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

Émile Souvestre

What a small dwelling joy can live.

Understand |

Emile Zola

I have for me only an ideal of truth and justice. But I am quite calm; I shall conquer. I was determined that my country should not remain the victim of lies and injustice. I may be condemned here. The day will come when France will thank me for having helped to save her honor.

Humanity | Protest |

Emil M. Cioran

We must censure the later Nietzsche for a panting excess in the writing, the absence of rests.

Misfortune | Misfortune |

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 |

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

No coward soul is mine, no trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven's glories shine, and Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear. O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life — that in me has rest, as I — undying Life — have power in Thee! Vain are the thousand creeds that move men's hearts: unutterably vain; worthless as withered weeds, or idlest froth amid the boundless main.

Mind | Pleasure |

Emma Goldman

Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day... The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun.

Birth | Body | Earth | Enjoyment | Guarantee | Heart | Human nature | Individual | Liberty | Men | Mind | Nature | Observation | Order | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Restraint | Soul | Study | Teach | Wickedness | Will | World |

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

She bounded before me, and returned to my side, and was off again like a young greyhound; and, at first, I found plenty of entertainment in listening to the larks singing far and near; and enjoying the sweet, warm sunshine; and watching her, my pet, and my delight, with her golden ringlets flying loose behind, and her bright cheek, as soft and pure in its bloom, as a wild rose, and her eyes radiant with cloudless pleasure. She was a happy creature, and an angel in those days. It is a pity she could not stay content.

Earth | Mind | Nature | Passion |

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

Today I will not seek the shadowy region; its unsustaining vastness waxes drear; and visions rising, legion after legion, bring the unreal world too strangely near.

Change | Eternal | Little | Love | Mind | Pleasure | Will |

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

You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - Oh, God! would you like to lie with your soul in the grave?

Devil | Duty | Mind | Pity |

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

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 hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

Care | Children | Grave | Happy | Nothing | Will |

Emma Goldman

I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love, and freedom in motherhood.

Cause | Convention | Death | Force | Freedom | Frivolity | Grave | Life | Life | Mind | Right | World |

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

Yesterday, you know, Mr. Earnshaw should have been at the funeral. He kept himself sober for the purpose - tolerably sober; not going to bed mad at six o'clock, and getting up drunk at twelve. Consequently he rose, in suicidal low spirits; as fit for the church as for a dance; and instead, he sat down by the fire and swallowed gin or brandy by tumblerfuls.

Mind | Study | Time |

Emma Goldman

Atheism... in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.

Cause | Convention | Death | Force | Freedom | Frivolity | Grave | Life | Life | Mind | Right | World |

Emma Goldman

The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven.

Mind | Past | Question | Right | Time |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The Heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care.

Heart | Mind |

Emma Goldman

Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.

Body | Earth | Enjoyment | Guarantee | Individual | Mind | Order | Purpose | Purpose | Restraint | Will |

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

As it spoke I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes: still it wailed, "Let me in!", and maintained its tenacious grip, almost maddening me with fear.

Mind | Neglect |

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

My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels — its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour found; measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound — o, dreadful is the check — intense the agony when the ear begins to hear and the eye begins to see; when the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again, the soul to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain. Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less; the more that anguish racks the earlier it will bless; and robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine if it but herald death, the vision is divine —

Change | Eternal | Little | Love | Mind | Pleasure | Time | Will |

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 |