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

William Shakespeare

O, what a world of vile ill-favored faults Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year. The Merry Wives of Windsor (Anne Page at III, iv)

Conscience | Cunning | Defeat | Devil | Father | Force | Gall | Heart | Heaven | Life | Life | Murder | Oppression | Passion | Play | Power | Property | Revenge | Soul | Spirit | Tears | Weakness | Will | Words | Murder | Guilty |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars, - not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispensing a calm radiance that hallows the whole. It is the bow that rests upon the bosom of the cloud when the storm is past. It is the light that hovers above the judgment seat.

Fear | Scepticism | Science | Truth | Universe |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.

Existence | Love | Universe |

Egyptian Proverbs

The only thing that is humiliating is helplessness.

Fear | Force | Object |

Elif Safak

When you see a hand from afar, Kimya, can you do that there is only one school. But you dive into the water, you realize that there is more than a river. The river is hidden inside various currents and they all run in harmony, yet are completely separate from one another.

Belief | Books | Destroy | Force | God | Good | Insanity | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Need | People | Philosophy | Religion | Taste | Time | Words | God | Understand |

Elihu Root

The growth of modern constitutional government compels for its successful practice the exercise of reason and considerate judgment by the individual citizens who constitute the electorate.

Authority | Conduct | Conformity | Control | Counsel | Force | Man | Nations | Power | Right | Counsel |

Elias Canetti

Ambition is the death of thought.

Force |

Elizabeth Dole, fully Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole

What you always do before you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it.

Force | Power |

Elihu Root

The mere assemblage of peace loving people to interchange convincing reasons for their common faith, mere exhortation and argument to the public in favor of peace in general fall short of the mark.

Civilization | Force | Progress | Public | Theoretical |

Elif Safak

The way we see what God is only a reflection of the way we see Anfsnna. If not God brings to our minds to fear and blame, it means that a great deal of fear and blame is flowing in our souls, but if we saw God full of love and compassion , we will be well

Joy | Pain | Universe | Will | Words | Gossip |

Albert Einstein

However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research.

Science | Spirit | Universe |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the monkey mind. The thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. My mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

Prayer | Universe |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance.

Body | Decision | Experience | Force | Friend | Little | People | Wrong | Govern | Think |

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 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

Loneliness watches and sights, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over... himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He’s going to make me sleep with him again tonight, i just know it.

Better | Happy | Heaven | Hell | Life | Life | Universe |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I'd learned enough from life's experiences to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn't take a great genius to recognize that when you are pushed by circumstance to do the one thing you have always most specifically loathed and feared, this can be, at the very least, an interesting growth opportunity.

Attention | Change | Control | Death | Ego | God | Heart | Important | Life | Life | Light | Little | Love | Marriage | Mind | People | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Relationship | Right | Soul | Space | Time | Universe | Will | God | Afraid | Think | Understand |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I know this simple fact to be true, for I myself have abandoned people who did not want me to go, and I myself have been abandoned by those whom I begged to stay.

Absolute | Acceptance | Eternal | Experience | Forgiveness | God | Universe | Forgiveness | God | Forgive |

Elizabeth Gilbert

It's so much easier and cheaper to keep the river uncontaminated in the first place than it is to clean it up again once it's been polluted.

Ego | Force | Will |

Elizabeth Gilbert

In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite.

Calmness | God | Right | Universe | God |