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

Ezra Taft Benson

We honor these partners [friends outside the Church] because their devotion to correct principles overshadowed their devotion to popularity, party, or personalities. We honor our founding fathers of this republic for the same reason. God raised up these patriotic partners to perform their mission, and he called them “wise men.” The First Presidency acknowledged that wisdom when they gave us the guideline a few years ago of supporting political candidates “who are truly dedicated to the Constitution in the tradition of our Founding Fathers.”. . . Our wise founders seemed to understand, better than most of us, our own scripture, which states that “it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority . . . they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.” To help prevent this, the founders knew that our elected leaders should be bound by certain fixed principles. Said Thomas Jefferson: “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” These wise founders, our patriotic partners, seemed to appreciate more than most of us the blessings of the boundaries that the Lord set within the Constitution, for he said, “And as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil.” In God the founders trusted, and in his Constitution — not in the arm of flesh. “O Lord,” said Nephi, “I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; . . . cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm.”

Better | Children | Eternal | Freedom | Pain | Time | Wisdom | Loss |

Ezra Taft Benson

The United States Constitution has been in existence longer than any written constitution in history. It has been a blessing, not only to our land, but to the world as well. Many nations have wisely adopted concepts and provisions of our Constitution, just as was prophesied.

Atheism | Children | Civilization | Education | Government | Public | Right | System | Will | World | Government |

Gustave Flaubert

Nevertheless the flames did die down -- whether exhausted from lack of supplies or choked by excessive feeding. Little by little, love was quenched by absence; regret was smothered by routine; and the fiery glow that had reddened her pale sky grew gray and gradually vanished... But the storm kept raging, her passion burned itself to ashes, no help was forthcoming, no new sun rose to the horizon. Night closed in completely around her, and she was left alone in a horrible void of piercing cold.

Fortune | World | Worth |

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.

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 |

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.

Hamilton Wright Mabie

I do not believe that the deeper problems of living can ever be answered by the process of thought. I believe that life itself teaches us either patience with regard to them, or reveals to us possible solutions when our hearts are pressed close against duties and sorrows and experiences of all kinds.

Fortune | Wife |

Hans Zinnser

The natural history of the rat is tragically similar to that of man ... some of the more obvious qualities in which rats resemble men ? ferocity, omnivorousness, and adaptability to all climates ... the irresponsible fecundity with which both species breed at all seasons of the year with a heedlessness of consequences, which subjects them to wholesale disaster on the inevitable, occasional failure of the food supply... Gradually, these two have spread across the earth, keeping pace with each other and unable to destroy each other, though continually hostile. They have wandered from East to West, driven by their physical needs, and ? unlike any other species of living things ? have made war upon their own kind. The gradual, relentless, progressive extermination of the black rat by the brown has no parallel in nature so close as that of the similar extermination of one race of man by another...

Fortune |

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

Where there are too many cooks the soup will be too salty.

Italian Proverbs

Where there is great love there is great pain.

Good | People | Right |

Italian Proverbs

The priest's friend loses his faith, the doctor's his health, and the lawyer's his fortune.

Italian Proverbs

The tongue goes to where the tooth aches.

Model | Office | Space | Thinking | Old |

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

Ask not the elves for advice, because they will tell you both 'yes' and 'no'.

Credit |

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

And Aragorn the King Elessar wedded Arwen Undomiel in the City of the Kings upon the day of Midsummer, and the tale of their long waiting and labors was come to fulfillment.

Children | Property | Slavery | Old |

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

A thousand years this city has stood, now at the whim of a madman it will fall.

Care |

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

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil...

Global | Important | Slavery |