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

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 |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time-now, too, I suppose-actually thought that at a given moment in history two human beings had evolved to a higher state than that of all the gods that ever were or ever will be. This is titanism, as the Greeks would say. This is madness.

Writing | Think |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I have found that there is no attitude so bizarre that one will not encounter it sooner or later if one travels far enough.

Writing |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The only absolute attainment is absolute abandonment.

Business | Will | Writing | Business |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

In general. . . novel-theorists have nothing very urgent or interesting to say about literature. Why then do they write when they have nothing to say? Because the ambitious teacher can only rise in the academic bureaucracy by writing at complicated length about writing that has already been much written about. The result of all this book-chat cannot interest anyone who knows literature while those who would like to learn something about books can only be mystified and discouraged by these commentaries.

Experiment | Revolution | Writing |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

With faith and hope and courage we hold our heads erect and with dauntless spirit marshal the working class for the march from Capitalism to Socialism, from Slavery to Freedom, from Barbarism to Civilization.

Courage | Hell | History | Labor | Men | Need | Spirit | Struggle | Time | Will | World | Writing |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.

Attention | Mind | Writing |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

In matters of faith, inconvenient evidence is always suppressed while contradictions go unnoticed.

Books | Literature | Nothing | Writing | Learn | Teacher |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.

Language | Little | Nothing | Sense | Writing |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Ideally, of course, a relationship is best, but then how many people are capable of deep feeling? Practically none.

Nothing | Writing |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

In any case, write what you know will always be excellent advice to those who ought not to write at all.

Books | Church | Meaning | Silence | Talking | Time | Writing |

Evan Esar

The thing that surprises the college graduate most when he gets out in the world is to find out how much uneducated people know.

Right | Writing |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

The serious artist must be as open as nature. Nature does not give all of herself in a paragraph. She is rugged and not set apart into discreet categories.

Writing |

Gustave Flaubert

Though she had no one to write to, she had bought herself a blotter, a writing case, a pen and envelopes; she would dust off her whatnot, look at herself in the mirror, take up a book, and then begin to daydream and let it fall to her lap? She wanted to die. And she wanted to live in Paris.

Little | Reading | Time | Writing |

Italian Proverbs

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Story | Writing |