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

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

Conditions are admittedly such that we can always manage to make doing each concrete individual case without the two different aspects leading to different expectations as to the result of certain experiments. We cannot, however, manage to make do with such old, familiar, and seemingly indispensable terms as "real" or "only possible"; we are never in a position to say what really is or what really happens, but we can only say what will be observed in any concrete individual case. Will we have to be permanently satisfied with this...? On principle, yes. On principle, there is nothing new in the postulate that in the end exact science should aim at nothing more than the description of what can really be observed. The question is only whether from now on we shall have to refrain from tying description to a clear hypothesis about the real nature of the world. There are many who wish to pronounce such abdication even today. But I believe that this means making things a little too easy for oneself.

Knowledge | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Research | Science | Space |

Esther Perel

It's hard to feel attracted to someone who has abandoned her sense of autonomy. Maybe he can love her, but it's clearly much harder for him to desire her. There's no tension.

Intelligence | Lust | Need | Order | Space |

Etty Hillesum, formally Ester "Etty" Hillesum

Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.

Death | Impulse | Nothing | Space |

Esther Perel

Eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other.

Anxiety | Anxiety | Space |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

For myself, I want no advantage over my fellow man, and if he is weaker than I, all the more is it my duty to help him.

Ignorance | Right | Superiority | Will | Trouble | Victim |

Eugenio Montale

Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity.

Invention | Poetry | Space |

Felix Adler

Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar's life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds.

Good | Human race | Progress | Race | Religion | Space | Will | World |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

Speak against unconscious oppression, speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, speak against bonds.

Little | People | Smile | Space |

Gustave Flaubert

Then, noticing on one of the shelves a volume of Hugo and another of Lamartine, he broke out into sarcastic criticisms of the romantic school. These poets had neither good sense nor correctness, and, above all, were not French! He plumed himself on his knowledge of the language, and analysed the most beautiful phrases with that snarling severity, that academic taste which persons of playful disposition exhibit when they are discussing serious art.

Space |

Italian Proverbs

The chamber-bell is the worst sound one have in his ears.

Journey | Method | Space |

Italian Proverbs

Two women and a goose make a market.

Doubt | Irony | Life | Life | Means | Need | Plenty | Self | Superiority | Understanding | Work | World | Afraid |

Italian Proverbs

Who has no children does not know what love is.

Hope | Order | Space |

Italian Proverbs

The tongue goes to where the tooth aches.

Model | Office | Space | Thinking | Old |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

I'm in the business of providing people with secondary satisfactions. It wouldn't have done me much good if they had all written their own plays, would it?

Ability | Change | Experience | Important | Myth | Qualities | Reading | Space | Time |

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

Be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.

Battle | Space | Old |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

A synopsis is a cold thing. You do it with the front of your mind. If you're going to stay with it, you never get quite the same magic as when you're going all out.

Ability | Change | Experience | Important | Qualities | Reading | Space | Time |

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

But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes? Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel-blade, fair yet terrible. A swift stroke she dealt, skilled and deadly. The outstretched neck she clove asunder, and the hewn head fell like a stone. Backward she sprang as the huge shape crashed to ruin, vast wings outspread, crumpled on the earth; and with its fall the shadow passed away. A light fell about her, and her hair shone in the sunrise.

Ability | Better | People | Position | Space | World | Think | Understand |