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

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.

Heart |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

No government as such is ever in favor of the freedom of the individual. It invariably seeks to limit that freedom, if not by overt denial, then by seeking constantly to widen its own functions.

Heart |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Religion deserves no more respect than a pile of garbage.

Heart |

Hans Hoffman

Color is a plastic means of creating intervals... color harmonics produced by special relationships, or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions, just as we differentiate in music between counterpoint and harmony.

Heart |

Hans Hoffman

It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture.

Light |

Italian Proverbs

Never point out the mistakes of another with a dirty finger.

Good | Light |

Italian Proverbs

Soon crooks the tree That good gambrel would be.

Light |

Italian Proverbs

Of the wealth of the world each has as much as they take.

Affliction | Gloom | Light |

Italian Proverbs

Never let people see the bottom of your purse or of your mind.

Care | Heart |

Italian Proverbs

Nothing venture, nothing have.

Comfort | God | Light | Looks | God |

Italian Proverbs

The man who loves is easy of belief.

Heart |

Italian Proverbs

The more one knows, the less one believes.

Heart | Love | Will | Think |

Italian Proverbs

Where there is nothing to gain, there is a lot to lose.

Example | Knowledge | Light | Think |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.

Appreciation | Art | Faith | Heart | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Mind | People | Religion | Appreciation | Art |

Italian Proverbs

You are more likely to win if you take the initiative and make an attack rather than preparing to defend yourself.

Faith | God | Light | People | Property | Religion | Will | God |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in our irritation, from... the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled carrots and Beluga caviar, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them.

Absolute | Compassion | Equity | Heart | Honor | Suffering | Work | World |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in color and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.

Father | Future | Light | Past | Think |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

I know only two words of American slang, 'swell' and 'lousy'. I think 'swell' is lousy, but 'lousy' is swell.

Imagination | Knowledge | Light | Technology | Thinking |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

No matter how piercing and appalling his insights, the desolation creeping over his outer world, the lurid lights and shadows of his inner world, the writer must live with hope, work in faith.

Joy | Light | Mind | Sense | Thinking | Thought | Time | Thought |

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

I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun; and behold! the Shadow has departed! I will be a Shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.

Art | Heart | Language | Religion | Art |