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

Elif Safak

It's never too late to ask yourself, Am I ready to change your life? Am I willing to change from the inside? It's really a shame if a single day in your life is the same as the previous one. In every moment, with every breath should be updated again and again.

Dreams | Work |

Eleanor Brown, fully Nora Eleanor Louisa Hervey Brown

I have loved this disaster of a library since I was old enough to read.

Conversation | Dreams | Feelings | Parents | Child | Old |

Elif Safak

What is the point of Roaming the world When it's the Same Everywhere misery?

Books | Love | People | Selfishness |

William Shakespeare

She dying, as it must be so maintained, Upon the instant that she was accused, Shall be lamented, pitied, and excused Of every hearer; for it so falls out That what we have we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost, Why, then we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours.

Dreams | Love | Pity | Thinking |

William Shakespeare

Sometimes the brightest day hath cloud, and summer evermore succeeds barren winter with its wrathful, nipping cold.—So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.

Dreams | Prayer |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Do I really deserve this pleasure? This is American, too-the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness.

Belief | Books | Care | Decision | Diligence | Divinity | Faith | Reason | Religion | Universe | Will |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Measure not the work until the day's out and the labour done, then bring your gauges.

Books | Man |

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 Gilbert

We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands.

Books | Fun | Waiting |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.

Better | Depression | Dreams | Important | Integrity | Marriage | Men | Mother | Relationship | Sense | Ugly | Talent |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Behold me! I am worthy of thy loving, for I love thee!

Dreams |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.

Better | Books | Looks | Love | Story | Will | Writing |

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Whatever the theories may be of woman's dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he cannot bear her burdens.

Books | History | Nothing | Teach |

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Among the clergy we find our most violent enemies, those most opposed to any change in woman's position.

Books | Discovery | Teach | Universe | Discovery |

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.

Books | Teach | Universe |

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, fully Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

They don't take the Bible as a general thing, sailors don't; though I will say that I never saw the man at sea who didn't give it the credit of being an uncommon good yarn.

Dreams | Imagination | Little | Rest | Will | World | Worth |

Dorothy Parker

I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.

Books | Men | Woman |

Dorothy Parker

You think you're frightening me with your hell, don't you? You think Yyur hell is worse than mine.

Books | Giving | Literature | Present | Trial |

Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

Only they have to weep bitter tears who know what has come to them is the result of their foolish conduct, their ignorant way, their want of proper understanding of life and what love means.

Books | Character | Common Sense | Force | Righteousness | Rites | Salvation | Sense | System | World | Happiness |

Dorothy Parker

His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.

Books |