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

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

Speaking on the near skepticism of the study of the history of philosophy:

Criticism | Distinguish | Doubt | Effort | Existence | Faith | God | Mind | Modesty | Need | Question | Reason | Truth | God | Afraid |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

The true reason why this universe appears to some scientists as mysterious is that, mistaking existential, that is, metaphysical, questions for scientific ones, they ask science to answer them. Naturally, they get no answers. Then they are puzzled, and they say that the universe is mysterious.

Absolute | Existence | God | Knowledge | Need | Scripture | Truth | God | Understand |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

If that ghost have money I tells him never to haunt you -- less'n he wants to lose it!

Life | Life | Meaning | Truth | Ugly | Learn |

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 |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. The sexual acts are entirely normal; if they we're not, no one would perform them.

Truth |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

If one starts with the anatomical difference, which even a patriarchal Viennese novelist was able to see was destiny, then one begins to understand why men and women don't get on very we'll within marriage, or indeed in any exclusive sort of long-range sexual relationship. He is designed to make as many babies as possible with as many different women as he can get his hands on, while she is designed to take time off from her busy schedule as astronaut or role model to lay an egg and bring up the result. Male and female are on different sexual tracks, and that cannot be changed by the Book or any book. Since all our natural instincts are carefully perverted from birth, it is no wonder that we tend to be, if not all of us serial killers, killers of our own true nature.

Men |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Questioning what seem to be the absurd beliefs of another group is a good way of recognizing the potential absurdity of many of one's own cherished beliefs.

Delusion | Truth |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The American people can have anything they want; the trouble is, they don't know what they want.

Blush | Truth | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.

Challenge | Truth | Think |

Eustace Budgell

Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

Better | Consideration | God | Mankind | Mind | Opinion | Reason | Tradition | Truth | Following | God | Think |

Eugenio Montale

I love athletics because it is poetry If the night dream, dream to be a marathon runner.

Art | People | Truth | Art |

Euripedes NULL

The variety of all things forms a pleasure.

Awe | Heaven | Life | Life | Truth | Wise |

Eugenio Montale

Where the power denies, in blatant forms but also with occult means, true freedom, popping up every so inspired men like Andrei Sakharov and Marco Pannellawho follow the spiritual position more difficult to assume that a victim in front of his oppressor: the refusal passive . Alone and unarmed, they also speak to us.

Evelyn Underhill

And so we take a holiday, a vacation, to gain release from this bondage for a space, to stand back from the rush of things and breathe again. But a holiday is a respite, not a cure. The more we need holidays, the more certain it is that the disease has conquered us and not we it. More and more holidays just to get away from it all is a sure sign of a decaying civilization; it was one of the most obvious marks of the breakdown of the Roman empire. It is a symptom that we haven't learned how to live so as to re-create ourselves in our work instead of being sapped by it. A car should always be charging its battery as it runs. If it simply uses up without putting back, it has to go into dock to be recharged. It is not a sign that we are running particularly well if we are constantly needing to go into dock.

Evil | Extreme | Love | Object | Time | Truth | Vision | World |

Evelyn Underhill

Living in the present means squarely accepting and responding to it as God's moment for you now while it is called "today" rather than wishing it were yesterday or tomorrow.

Absolute | Beginning | Language | Love | Mysticism | Philosophy | Truth |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

My dear, I should like to stick you full of barbed arrows like a p-p-pin cushion...Where do you lurk? I shall come down your burrow and ch-chivvy you out like an old st-t-toat.

Absurd | Time |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

I used to know Brian Howard well -- a dazzling young man to my innocent eyes. In later life he became very dangerous -- constantly attacking people with his fists in public places -- so I kept clear of him. He was consumptive but the immediate cause of his death was a broken heart.

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic - that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. And that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed.

Need |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

The worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him.

Truth |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Any organization or any individual that targets civilians and kills them for political agenda is a terrorist organization.

Arrogance | Belief | Play | Truth | World |