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

Elizabeth Gilbert

If you can plant yourself in stillness long enough, you will, in time, experience the truth that everything (both uncomfortable and lovely) does eventually pass.

Belief | Care | Destiny | Evidence | Faith | God | Life | Life | Light | Meaning | Nature | Play | Prudence | Prudence | God |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But both are equally true.

Enough | Force | Journey | Nature | Regard | Rule | Truth | Universe | Will | Old |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Last spring, David had offered this crazy solution to our woes, only half in jest:... What if we admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we can't live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives together- in misery, but happy to not be apart. Let it be a testimony to how desperately I love this guy that I have spent the last ten months giving that offer serious consideration. The other alternative in the backs of our minds, of course, was that one of us might change. He might become more open and affectionate, not withholding himself from anyone who loves him on the fear that she will eat his soul. Or I might learn how to ... stop trying to eat his soul.

Life | Life | Man | Nature | Worry |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Here was something I already knew to be true about myself: Just as there are some wives who will occasionally need a break from their husbands in order to visit a spa for the weekend with their girlfriends, I will always be the sort of wife who occasionally needs a break from her husband in order to visit Cambodia. Just for a few days!

Family | Loneliness | Means | Nature | Will | Worry |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me to not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough--but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.

Computer | Day | Earth | Humanity | Life | Life | Little | Music | Nature | Nothing | People | Television | Time | World |

William Shakespeare

Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband.

Comfort | Men |

Elizabeth Lesser

If we want liberation, we must rewrite the Sleeping Beauty myth. No one is coming and no one else is to blame.

Eternal | Nature | Peace | Will | Happiness |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world; oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time!

Faith | God | Nature | Need | Will | God |

Elizabeth Lesser

Spirituality is fearlessness. It is a way of looking boldly at this life we have been given, here, now, on earth, as this human being.

Nature | Search | Truth |

Elizabeth Gilbert

The search for satisfaction to Aahdf to protection and interest Almatatin, but a generous gift to the world. Saved one of every misery, Azaha of the way. To dream an obstacle, not in front of himself, but also in front of others. Only then will be free to serve the people and enjoy Bhbhm.

Belief | Destiny | Faith | God | Hope | Humanity | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Search | Will | God |

Elizabeth Lesser

Meditation practice is like piano scales, basketball drills, ballroom dance class. Practice requires discipline; it can be tedious; it is necessary. After you have practiced enough, you become more skilled at the art form itself. You do not practice to become a great scale player or drill champion. You practice to become a musician or athlete. Likewise, one does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living.

Attention | Divinity | Longing | Meditation | Mysticism | Nature | Religion | Self | Spirituality | Time | Friends |

Elizabeth Gilbert

There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging, Dear saint-please, please, please...give me the grace to win the lottery. This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated staue comes to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust, My son-please, please, please...buy a ticket. Prayer is a realtionship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm ainming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift.

Belief | Books | Care | Decision | Destiny | Divinity | Faith | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Reason | Religion | Scripture | Will | God |

Elizabeth Lesser

It does pay to be honest. It pays in rewarding relationships. It pays in unblocked energy. It pays in passion. To stand tall in who you are, unafraid to reveal what you want and need, kind enough to tell the truth, and brave enough to bear the consequences, is a telling sign of spiritual development.

Compassion | Generosity | Life | Life | Meaning | Morality | Openness | Religion | Thought | Thought |

Elizabeth Lesser

Are you becoming more and more aware of the interconnection of all beings, creatures and elements? Do you hold as your own Jesus' words: 'And whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me'? Are you getting tired of the way our society celebrates the false ego's selfish and insatiable drive to acquire and use more and more? And does that make you want to be an agent of healing? A declaration of life's interdependence is a sign of spiritual progress.

Arrogance | Fear | Fighting | Health | Life | Life | Listening | Nature | Practice | Soul | Surrender | Uncertainty | Will |

Elizabeth Gould Davis

Men insist that they don't mind women succeeding so long as they retain their "femininity". Yet the qualities that men consider "feminine" timidity, submissiveness, obedience, silliness, and self-debasement — are the very qualities best guaranteed to assure the defeat of even the most gifted aspirant.

Nature | Qualities | Sense |

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, fully Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

It is in the nature of all passionate and uncontrolled emotion to prey upon and weaken the forces of reflective power, as much as it is in the nature of controlled emotion to strengthen them.

Art | Growth | Progress | Sympathy | Art |

Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

For me it will be enough that a marble stone should declare that a queen having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.

Nature |

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, fully Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

It is not in our drawing-rooms that we should look to judge of the intrinsic worth of any style of dress. The street-car is a truer crucible of its inherent value.

Nature |

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, fully Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Surely it is one of the simplest laws of taste in dress, that it shall not attract undue attention from the wearer to the worn.

Absolute | Attainment | Labor | Means | Nature | Sacrifice | Woman | Worth |

Elizabeth Gould Davis

Woman's reproductive organs are far older than man's and far more highly evolved. Even in the lowest mammals, as well as in woman, the ovaries, uterus, vagina, etc., are similar, indicating that the female reproductive system was one of the first things perfected by nature. On the other hand, the male reproductive organs, the testicles and the penis, vary as much among species and through the course of evolution as does the shape of the foot — from hoof to paw. Apparently, then, the male penis evolved to suit the vagina, not the vagina to suit the penis.

Eternal | Men | Past | Power |