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

Evelyn Underhill

If you have made a decision, and you still feel, taking it all in all, it was the right one, then don't look over your shoulder on what might have been. If it was wrong, ask for forgiveness and accept the present consequences, happily and without remorse. Nothing is more corrosive of the powers you should be using to meet the present.

Charity | Cost | Little | Love | Piety | World | Talent |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid, I would hardly be a human being.

Beauty | World | Beauty |

Evelyn Underhill

As the genuine religious impulse becomes dominant, adoration more and more takes charge. I come to seek God because I need Him, may be an adequate formula for prayer. I come to adore His splendor, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet, is the only possible formula for worship.

Meaning | Purity | Reality | Strength | World |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Mrs. Ape's famous hymn, There ain't no flies on the Lamb of God.

Future | Will | World |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

The langor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.

Chance | Heaven | Knowing | Man | Soul | World |

Evan Esar

The trouble with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of parenthood.

People | World |

Evelyn Underhill

If we do not at least try to manifest something of Creative Charity in our dealings with life, whether by action, thought, or prayer, and do it at our own cost -- if we roll up the talent of love in the nice white napkin of piety and put it safely out of the way, sorry that the world is so hungry and thirsty, so sick and so fettered, and leave it at that: then, even that little talent may be taken from us. We may discover at the crucial moment that we are spiritually bankrupt.

Control | Day | God | Nothing | Organization | People | Will | Witness | World | God |

Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie

A large part of my work has been collaborating with composers; I think we've commissioned about 140 pieces now, a lot of them percussion concertos.

Order | World |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally.

Chance | Heaven | Knowing | Little | Man | Nothing | Race | Soul | Survival | Vision | World |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

IÂ’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I canÂ’t shut myself out from His mercy.

Ends | Enough | Story | Wonder | World |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

These memories are the memorials and pledges of the vital hours of a lifetime. These hours of afflatus in the human spirit, the springs of art, are, in their mystery, akin to the epochs of history, when a race which for centuries has lived content, unknown, behind its own frontiers, digging, eating, sleeping, begetting, doing what was requisite for survival and nothing else, will, for a generation or two, stupefy the world; commit all manner of crimes, perhaps; follow the wildest chimeras, go down in the end in agony, but leave behind a record of new heights scaled and new rewards won for all mankind; the vision fades, the soul sickens, and the routine of survival starts again.

Evil | World |

Evelyn Underhill

This, of course, is what religion is about: this adherence to God, this confident dependence on that which is unchanging. This is the more abundant life which, in its own particular language and own particular way, it calls us to live. Because it is our part in the one life in the whole universe of spirits, our share in the great drive towards Reality, the tendency of all life to seek God Who made it for Himself and now incites and guides it, we are already adapted to it. Just as a fish is adapted to life in the sea. This view of our situation fills us with a certain awed and humble gladness. It delivers us from all niggling fuss about ourselves, prevents us from feeling self-important about our own little spiritual adventures; and yet makes them worthwhile as part of one great spiritual adventure.

Church | God | Longing | Soul | Spirit | World | God |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.

Peace | World |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.

Speech | World | Think |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

ItÂ’s a rather pleasant change when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me.

Thought | World | Thought |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Even on that convivial evening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of social uneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment about himself in which he floated with log-like calm.

Better | Despondency | Pleasure | World |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Ten men of revolting appearance were approaching from the drive. They were low of brow, crafty of eye, and crooked of limb. They advanced huddled together with the loping tread of wolves, peering about them furtively as they came, as though in constant terror of ambush; they slavered at their mouths, which hung loosely over the receding chins, while each clutched under his ape-like arm a burden of curious and unaccountable shape. On seeing the Doctor they halted and edged back, those behind squinting and molting over the companions' shoulders.

Effort | Knowing | Little | World |

Ezra Taft Benson

Jefferson warned that we should not talk about confidence in men but that we should inhibit their power through the Constitution.

Blessings | Freedom | Opportunity | World |