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. Jackson Brown, Jr.

I've learned that it doesn't matter how your husband squeezes the toothpaste, the important thing is how he squeezes you.

Will |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

As I stoop to lace my shoe you clout me over the coccyx with a length of hickory (Carya lacinosa). I conclude instantly that you are a jackass. This is a whole process of human thought in little. This also is free will.

Will | Youth | Youth |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

In the duel of sex, woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

Hate |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

Friend |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The only obligation I recognize in this world is my duty to my immediate family

Will |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever... I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it.

Will | Learn | Old |

Haile Selassie

There are good men and wicked. The former should be made use of and the latter punished, without attempting to understand why the ones are good and the others wicked.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Liar: (a) One who pretends to be very good; (b) One who pretends to be very bad.

Haile Selassie

If each and every one endeavors to cooperate and work in as much as his capacity permits, our faith rests upon the Almighty God that he would bless the results for us.

Will |

Haile Selassie

The United Nations continues to sense as the forum where nations whose interests clash may lay their cases before world opinion. It still provides the essential escape valve without which the slow build-up of pressures would have long since resulted in catastrophic explosion.

Day |

Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland

He who travels west travels not only with the sun but with history.

Will |

Hannah Arendt

If you ask a member of this generation two simple questions: "How do you want the world to be in fifty years?" and "What do you want your life to be like five years from now?" the answers are quite often preceded by "Provided there is still a world" and "Provided I am still alive." To the often-heard question, ?Who are they, this new generation?? one is tempted to answer, Those who hear the ticking. And to the other question, Who are they who utterly deny them? the answer may well be, Those who do not know, or refuse to face, things as they really are.

Will |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

Will |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The war on privilege will never end. Its next great campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.

Force | Malice | Reason |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The worst man hesitates when choosing a mother for his children. And hesitating, he is lost.

Haile Selassie

The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjugation of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security. But these, too, as were the phrases of the Covenant, are only words; their value depends wholly on our will to observe and honour them and give them content and meaning. The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act ? and if necessary, to suffer and die ? for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied. These lessons must be learned anew by each succeeding generation, and that generation is fortunate indeed which learns from other than its own bitter experience. This Organization and each of its members bear a crushing and awesome responsibility: to absorb the wisdom of history and to apply it to the problems of the present, in order that future generations may be born, and live, and die, in peace.

Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland

To know after absence the familiar street and road and village and house is to know again the satisfaction of home.

Learning | Will |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

Organization | Will | Trouble | Leader |

Hamilton Wright Mabie

Fair queen, at home there is none like thee, but over the mountains is Snow-white free, with seven little dwarfs, who are strange to see; a thousand times fairer than thou is she. Queen, thou art not the fairest now; Snow-white over the mountain's brow a thousand times fairer is than thou. Queen, thou art the fairest here, but not when Snow-white is near; over the mountains still is she, fairer a thousand times than thee.

Good | Will |

Haile Selassie

Here is our opportunity and our challenge. If the nuclear powers are prepared to declare a truce, let us seize the moment to strengthen the institutions and procedures which will serve as the means for the pacific settlement of disputes among men.

Pleasure | Will |