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

Vine Deloria, fully Vine Victor Deloria, Jr.

Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there.

Force | Genius | Integration |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight.

Power | Universe |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.

Force | Heaven | Life | Life | Suffering | Will |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

If I didn't know you better I'd call this ingratitude.

Beauty | Force | Nothing | Will | Beauty | Old |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

Literature is no one’s private ground, literature is common ground; let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves.

Darkness | Light | Lust | Universe |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother's perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers ... Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple loft in the sly, but was careful to hide them or set fire to them.

Beauty | Children | Force | Life | Life | Light | People | Spirit | Thinking | Thought | Woman | World | Worship | Beauty | Old | Thought |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order. Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind

Force | Right | Wrong |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

There is, then, a world immune from change. But I am not composed enough, standing on tiptoe on the verge of fire, still scorched by the hot breath, afraid of the door opening and the leap of the tiger, to make even one sentence. What I say is perpetually contradicted. Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room.

Force | Power |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

The clock ticks. The two hands are convoys marching through a desert. The black bars on the clock face are green oases. The long hand has marched ahead to find water. The other, painfully stumbles among hot stones in the desert. It will die in the desert.

Beauty | Freedom | Heart | Power | Universe | World | Beauty |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness.

Burial | Love | Nothing | Right | Universe |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.

Events | Force | Will | Wrong |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Procrastination is illogical from every viewpoint. It is like the man who wanted to cross the stream, so he sat on the bank to wait for all the water to run by.

Enough | Force |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

An awakened man has no enemies; even if he has enemies.

Father | Mind | Universe | Will | Worry |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Think for days about the following thought: Hostility serves no natural need.

Day | Force | Need | Wrong |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

To understand life, all you need to do is study what comes your way. See it and let revelation come to you.

Events | Mind | Need | Power | Universe |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

True life is vertical, not horizontal.

Force |

Victor Hugo

Go out in the world and work like money doesn't matter, Sing as if no one is listening, Love as if you have never been hurt, and Dance as if no one is watching

Desperation | Force | Hope |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

The wise person replaces toys with medicines.

Fear | Force | Lesson | Love | People | Preference | Will |

Victor Hugo

It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky... a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe.

Force | Light | Truth |

Victor Hugo

The Utopia that grows impatient and turns into riot knows what awaits her; almost always she is too soon. Then she resigns herself and stoically accepts, instead of triumph, catastrophe.

Universe |