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

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

People | Prison | Public | Will |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

I have been here before, I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendor, and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.

Good | Mind |

Eustace Budgell

In short, nothing is more wanting to our public schools than that the masters of them should use the same care in fashioning the manners of their scholars as in forming their tongues to the learned languages. Wherever the former is omitted, I cannot help agreeing with Mr. Locke, that a man must have a very strange value for words, when, preferring the languages of the Greeks and Romans to that which made them such brave men, he can think it worthwhile to hazard the innocence and virtue of his son for a little Greek and Latin.

Artifice | Education | Good | Man | Method | Public |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.

Family | Good | Love | Mind | Mourning |

Evan Esar

A dollar saved is a dollar earned, but seldom vice versa.

Power |

Ezra Taft Benson

And so this great nation has come into being under the inspiration of the Almighty to accomplish his purposes. Through modern revelation we have had made very plain to us something of the mission of America and the establishment of our national Constitution.

Blessings | Free enterprise | Men | Mind | People | Right | System | Time |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Old boy, said Grimes, you're in love. Nonsense! Smitten? said Grimes. No, no. The tender passion? No. Cupid's jolly little darts? No. Spring fancies, love's young dream? Nonsense! Not even a quickening of the pulse? No. A sweet despair? Certainly not. A trembling hope? No. A frisson? a Je ne sais quoi? Nothing of the sort. Liar! said Grimes.

Journey | Mind |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Perhaps all our lovers are merely hints and symbols; vagabond languages scrawled on gate-posts and paving stones along the weary road that others have trampled before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond each other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.

Day | Glory | Laughter | Men | Quiet |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim. . . Seth paused in his dictation and gazed out across the harbour where in the fresh breeze of early morning the last dhow was setting sail for the open sea. Rats, he said; stinking curs. They are all running away.

Discretion | Temper |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher.

Mind |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

The next four weeks of solitary confinement were among the happiest of Paul's life...It was so exhilarating, he found, never to have to make any decision on any subject, to be wholly relieved from the smallest consideration of time, meas, or clothes, to have no anxiety ever about what kind of impression he was making; in fact, to be free.

Earth | Life | Life | Mind | Unique | Youth | Youth |

Evelyn Underhill

Grace is God himself, his loving energy at work within his church and within our souls.

Problems | Quiet |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

His courtesy was somewhat extravagant. He would write and thank people who wrote to thank him for wedding presents and when he encountered anyone as punctilious as himself the correspondence ended only with death.

Power | Wealth |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Public | Think |

Ezra Taft Benson

Do not rationalize your acceptance of government gratuities by saying, “I am a contributing taxpayer too.” By doing this you contribute to the problem which is leading this nation to financial insolvency.

Mind |

Ezra Taft Benson

The world today speaks a great deal about love, and it is sought by many. But the pure love of Christ differs greatly from what the world thinks of love. Charity never seeks selfish gratification. The pure love of Christ seeks only the eternal growth and joy of others.

Freedom | Heaven | Power | Time | War |

Ezra Taft Benson

Leaders of youth, teach our young people to love freedom, to know that it is God-given. . . . Teach them to love their country, to know that it has a spiritual foundation, that it has a prophetic history, that it is the LordÂ’s base of operation. Teach them that the Constitution of the United States was established by men whom God raised up for that very purpose, that it is not outmoded, that it is not an old-fashioned agrarian document, as some men in high places are calling it today.

Confidence | Men | Power |

Ezra Taft Benson

Our Creator endowed each one of us with certain rights at birth, among which are the rights to life, liberty, speech, and conscience, to name a few. These are not just human rights; they are divine rights. When these rights are not permitted expression by a nation, that nation becomes inhibited in its progress and development, and its leaders are responsible before God for suffocating sacred rights. This native endowment is what separates man from the animals. It causes men to want to be good and to seek higher aspirations. It creates in man a desire to better his life and his station in life.

Business | Freedom | Future | Guarantee | Individual | Judgment | People | Power | Public | Rights | System | Wants | Wishes | Business |

Ezra Taft Benson

That government is best which governs the least, so taught the courageous founders of this nation. This simple declaration is diametrically opposed to the all too common philosophy that the government should protect and support one from the cradle to the grave. The policy of the Founding Fathers has made our people and our nation strong. The opposite leads inevitably to moral decay.

Accident | Cost | Danger | Debt | Defense | Despot | Enjoyment | Eternal | Faith | God | Government | Inspiration | Life | Life | Man | Means | Need | Nothing | People | Principles | Prophecy | Receive | Responsibility | Rights | Theories | Trust | Vigilance | Weakness | Will | Wise | Words | Government | Danger | God | Privilege | Understand |

Ezra Taft Benson

What are these fundamental principles which have allowed the United States to progress so rapidly and yet remain free? First, a written Constitution clearly defining the limits of government so that government will not become more powerful than the people.

Agony | Earth | Force | Freedom | Government | Harm | Improvement | Individual | People | Power | World | Zeal | Government |