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

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid of love, I who love love? Why must I hide myself in self-contempt in order to understand? Why was I born without a skin, O God, that I must wear armor in order to touch or to be touched?

Beauty | Earth | Grace | Life | Life | Love | Music | Beauty | Afraid |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

The knowledge of GodÂ’s existence thereby acquires a universal significance and absolute certitude. Indeed, even those who do not understand the philosophical proofs of the existence of God are informed about this truth by divine revelation. Philosophers or not, everyone to whom his word is communicated through the preaching of scripture and who receives it as coming from him, in this way knows that God exists. Philosophers themselves need to remember that God has revealed his existence and to hold onto that truth by faith.

Absolute | Man | Philosophy | Rest |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

The more a man has what he desired, he cherishes most it has.

Man | Science |

Eudora Welty

A whole tree of lightning stood in the sky. She kept looking out the window, suffused with the warmth from the fire and with the pity and beauty and power of her death. The thunder rolled.

Daring | Life | Life |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

It kills the pain. You go back until at last you are beyond its reach. Only the past when you were happy is real.

Accident | Earth | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Mystery | Will | Woman | Understand |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time

Dreams | Life | Life | Little | Worth |

Eugene Peterson

The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original. God's creative genius is endless.

Bible | God | Life | Life | Story | God | Bible |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

The really irreparable loss is that of desires.

Man |

Eugene Peterson

Wait and watch are the two words given to us in our suffering. The words are connected with the image of watchmen waiting through the night for the dawn. There is something you can do, or more exactly, there is someone you can be: be a watchman.

God | Journey | Life | Life | People | God | Blessed |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

When money represents so many things, not to love it would be to love nearly nothing. To forget true needs can be only a weak moderation; but to know the value of money and to sacrifice it always, maybe to duty, maybe even to delicacy,—that is real virtue.

Man | Woman |

Eugene Peterson

ItÂ’s a wonderful formula for getting to heaven the quickest and easiest way. And virtually foolproof. There is no time to backslide, no temptations to bother with, no doubts to wrestle with, no spouse to have to honor, no kids to put up with, no enemies to love, no more sorrow, no more tears. Instant eternity.

Conversation | God | Life | Life | People | Work | God |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

But land is land, and it's safer than the stocks and bonds of Wall Street swindlers.

Life | Life | Self |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

The means expeditious not occur as the work of a day.

Man |

Eudora Welty

Then the light changed the water, until all about them the woods in the rising wind seemed to grow taller and blow inward together and suddenly turn dark. The rain struck heavily. A huge tail seemed to lash through the air and the river broke in a wound of silver.

Life | Life | Work | Writing |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

A man's work is in danger of deteriorating when he thinks he has found the one best formula for doing it. If he thinks that, he is likely to feel that all he needs is merely to go on repeating himself . . . so long as a person is searching for better ways of doing his work, he is fairly safe.

Absurd | Enough | Faith | Life | Life | Truth | Trial |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

LAVINIA: I love everything that grows simply-- up toward the sun-- everything that's straight and strong! I hate what's warped and twists and eats into itself and dies for a lifetime in shadow...

Life | Life | Love | Right | Time |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Anais Nin gave me my most original, or so I thought, creation. As I read Incest, I realized that something which I had always taken to be unique, the voice of Myra Breckinridge, was actually that of Anaïs in all the flowing megalomania of the diaries. Of course, I had not read the diaries then, but even so, if only for that one thundering voice, I am forever in her debt.

Man |

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

There is only one thing to do — take it to the country!

Incompetence | Life | Life | People | Success | System | War |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

In fact, the French - who read and theorise the most - became so addicted to political experiment that in the two centuries since our own rather drab revolution they have exuberantly produced one Directory, one Consulate, two empires, three restorations of the monarchy, and five republics. That's what happens when you take writing too seriously.

Birth | Contradiction | Life | Life |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Little Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to beat war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror,but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means.It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless.