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

Italian Proverbs

Virtue comes not from chance but long study.

Memory | Time |

Italian Proverbs

Water after does not quench a fire at hand.

Time | Unity | Think |

Italian Proverbs

Where there is nothing to gain, there is a lot to lose.

Example | Knowledge | Light | Think |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

In the development and the maintenance of a living organism the coordination is very clear. The development of each part can be shown to be dependent on that of other parts, including the immediate environment; and the more closely development and maintenance are studied the more evident does this become. But the particular manner in which the parts and the environment influence one another is such that the specific structure and activities of the organism are maintained. They are unmistakably developed and maintained as a whole, and this is what we mean when we say that the organism lives a specific life. The conception of its life enables us to predict the general behavior of its parts so long as it is alive, and in particular it enables us to predict the general manner of its reproduction from a rudimentary part of the same organism? it is this co-ordinated maintenance that we call life.

Life | Life | Man |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilizations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.

Age | Boys | Magic | Time | Vision |

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

Dead men are not friends to living men, and give them no gifts.

Better | Cause | Peril | Time | Will |

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

Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.

Man |

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

A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.

Curiosity | Error | Experience | Important | Life | Life | Nothing | Past | Pleasure | Price | Pride | Sense | Story | Teach | Time | Waiting | Will | Wrong |

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

All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But... I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.

Age | Books | Children | Dirty | Life | Life | Receive | Work |

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

And there was Frodo, pale and worn, and yet himself again; and in his eyes there was peace now, neither strain of will, nor madness, nor any fear. His burden was taken away.

Books | Rights |

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

Any corner of that county (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way 'home' to me, as no other part of the world is. There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that.

Existence | Hope | Important | Man | Woman |

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

And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to.

Business | Children | Debt | Extreme | Important | Question | Slavery | Business | Understand |

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

Death never comes at the right time, despite what mortals believe. Death always comes like a thief.

Nations | Object | Race | Spirit | Time |

Italian Proverbs

With patience you go beyond knowledge.

God | Harm | Ignorance | Power | Time | Truth | Will | Witness | God |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.

Faith | People | Purpose | Purpose | Reading | Science | Thought | Time | Thought |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

Action | Enough | Force | Law | Little | Time |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

We must beware the revenge of the starved senses, the embittered animal in its prison.

Father | Knowledge | Love | Time |

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

All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.

Nature | Technology | Time |

Italian Proverbs

With art and knavery we live through half the year; with knavery and art we live through the other.

Generosity | Selfishness | Time | Unkindness |