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

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The world is a spiritual kindergarten where bewildered infants are trying to spell GOD with the wrong blocks.

Power | Wisdom |

Kautilya, aka Chanakya or Vishnu Gupta NULL

The world's biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

Knowledge | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Time | Wise |

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

Munificent Nature, endowed with attributes, accomplishes by manifold means the purpose of the attributeless and uncaring Self, with no gain for itself.

Knowledge | Method |

Hakuin, fully Hakuin Akaku NULL

You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?

Will | Wisdom |

Egyptian Proverbs

False ambition serves the neck.

Good | Light | Silence |

Egyptian Proverbs

Put a rope around your neck and many will be happy to drag you along

Light | Will |

Egyptian Proverbs

At the time of a test, a person rises or falls.

Effort | Heaven | Hope | Knowledge |

Egyptian Proverbs

Maat, who links universal to terrestrial, the divine with the human is incomprehensible to the cerebral intelligence.

Knowledge |

Egyptian Proverbs

Declare your line of conduct without reticence.

Light | Will |

Egon Friedell, born Egon Friedmann

The highest, the only reality, is ever at hand, but for the most part invisible. Genius makes it visible... All knowing that goes beyond the immediate experience of the moment is a matter of faith.

Light | Mankind | World |

Egyptian Proverbs

The dream of cats is all mice.

Land |

Egyptian Proverbs

What is written on the brow will inevitably be seen by the eye.

Eileen Garrett

Isn't there a picture that belongs in the original frame? Life [one suspects she means spiritual life] cannot die. You can explode its dynamism [the physical body] but you cannot dissipate its energy. If you suffer where life suffered, the essence that once filled the frame will take from you something to dramatize and live again.

Eternal | Experience | Knowledge | Prediction |

Egon Friedell, born Egon Friedmann

Artists of all sorts remain youthful for so long, and in many cases attain a grand old age. The explanation is that they live in an almost permanent condition of stimulation and excitement.

Light |

Egon Friedell, born Egon Friedmann

The artist's view of the world and mankind is that which seeks as far as possible to lose itself in its object, illuminating it not from the outside by some light foreign to it, but from within, deriving light from its own core.

Light |

Egyptian Proverbs

No one can go above their status in life.

Discussion | Light |

Egyptian Proverbs

Leave him in error who loves his error.

Elif Safak

The Iron Rule of prudence for an Istanbulite Woman: If you are as fragile as a tea glass, either find a way to never encounter burning water and hope to marry an ideal husband or get yourself laid and broken as soon as possible. Alternatively, stop being a tea-glass woman!

Light | Child |

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 |

Elif Safak

Isn't connecting people to distant lands and culture one of the strengths of good literature?

Attention | Light | Mistake | Obedience | Power | Will | World | Teacher |