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

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

A Puritan is a person who lives in the fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.

Better | Friend |

Gustave Flaubert

You ask me whether the Orient is up to what I imagined it to be. Yes, it is; and more than that, it extends far beyond the narrow idea I had of it. I have found, clearly delineated, everything that was hazy in my mind. Facts have taken the place of suppositions - so excellently so that it is often as though I were suddenly coming upon old forgotten dreams.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

Woman |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.

Appetite | Waiting |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

Organization | Will | Trouble | Leader |

Hannah Arendt

Men in plural? can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.

Italian Proverbs

Skip the enjoyment that you will regret.

Ideas | Right |

Italian Proverbs

Of this world each man has as much as he takes.

Life | Life | Men |

Italian Proverbs

Sometimes it is better to give your apple away, than to eat it yourself.

Absolute | Belief |

Italian Proverbs

No one should take in an eating pawn.

Italian Proverbs

One should learn to sail in all winds.

Future | Will |

Italian Proverbs

The difficult thing is to get foot in the stirrup.

Books | Future | Wonder | Words |

Italian Proverbs

Not all words require an answer.

Better | God | Will | God |

Italian Proverbs

One must have been controlled in the same situation one wishes to properly control others.

Change | People | World | Think |

Italian Proverbs

Poverty wants many things, and avarice all.

Business | Government | Right | Wealth | Government | Business |

Italian Proverbs

The heart does not think all the mouth says.

Italian Proverbs

The ass does not know the worth of this tail till he has lost it.

Books | Character | Effort | Hope | Judgment | Will | Work | Realism |

Italian Proverbs

No one ever became poor through giving alms.

Art | Design | Sense | Technology | Thinking | Will | Art |