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

Fannie Hurst

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

Good | Man | Woman |

Faye Wattleton

This is not a debate about abortion. This is about a fundamental right to make choices about our sexuality -- without the encroachment of a president, the Supreme Court, and certainly without the encroachment of politicians!

Future | Love | Need | Race | Strength | Will | Woman | Child |

Ezra Taft Benson

Not cheap politicians but statesmen are needed today. Not opportunists but men and women of principle must be demanded by the people. In this time of great stress and danger we must place [in office] only those dedicated to the preservation of our Constitution, our American Republic, and responsible freedom under God. “Oh, God, give us men with a mandate higher than the ballot box.”

Hope | Lord | Miracles | Wants | Will | Woman |

Felix Adler

There is a city to be built, the plan of which we carry in our heads, in our hearts. Countless generations have already toiled at the building of it. The effort to aid in completing it, with us, takes the place of prayer. In this sense we say, "Laborare est orare."

Daring | Life | Life | Man | Men | Present | Righteousness | Search | Theories | Thinkers | Thought | Time | Truth | Unity | Will | Woman | World | Youth | Youth | Learn | Thought |

Gustave Flaubert

Our duty is to feel what is great and love what is beautiful -- not to accept all the social conventions and the infamies they impose on us.

Woman |

Gustave Flaubert

Such killings were part of the natural order of things, an inevitable consequence of belonging to a royal household.

Woman |

Gustave Flaubert

She was standing bolt upright. With big flaming eyes she looked down on him with a severe, almost terrible expression. Then tears came and made a mist in them, her shell-like eyelids drooped, she surrendered her hands.

Woman |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.

Thought | Woman | Thought |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

It takes only one Communist to ruin a labor union. It takes only one drop of Oleum tiglii to turn a respectable class of rye into a Mickey Finn.

Woman |

Gustave Flaubert

The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.

Woman |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

Woman |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Woman |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

Woman |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clich‚s. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

Man | Woman |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The state ? or, to make matters more concrete, the government ? consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can?t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting ?A? to satisfy ?B?. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods.

Man | Woman |

Italian Proverbs

The house completed, possession defeated.

Will | Woman |

Italian Proverbs

The person who enjoys good health is rich, even if he doesn't know it.

Woman |

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

Any corner of that county (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way 'home' to me, as no other part of the world is. There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that.

Existence | Hope | Important | Man | Woman |

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

But it is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place.

Chance | Good | Little | Reason | Rest | Slavery | Will | Woman |

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

And here you will stay, Gandalf the Grey, and rest from journeys. For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman the Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colors! I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colors, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

Service | Woman |