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

Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

One wants to be an honest man; one is so, one works hard; but still one cannot make both ends meet; on must give up the work, there is no chance of carrying it out without spending more on it than one gets back for it; one gets a feeling of shortcomi

Ideas | Question | Think |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?

Abstract | Care | Ideas | Think |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge, are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? — not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?

Men | Reality | World |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.

Belief | Body | Courage | Freedom | Habit | Life | Life | Little | Men | Opportunity | Past | Reality | Talking | Will | World |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

No, never say now, no one in this world, that they were this or that. She felt very young, and at the same time unspeakably old. As a razor passed through all; while kept out looking. He had a perpetual sense, as she watched the cars, being outside, alone and far out at sea; always felt it was very, very dangerous to live, for one day it was. Do not judge that smart, or too out of the ordinary. Nor could learn how life had gone through with the few fingers that had given him knowledge Fräulein Daniels. I knew nothing, nor language, nor history; rarely read a book now, except memoirs in bed, but as the absorbed everything, cars passing, and would not say to Peter, would not say of herself: I am this, I am what .

Chance | Man | Reality | Work | Think |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

I seldom see Lytton; that is true. The reason is that we don't fit in, I imagine, to his parties nor he to ours; but that if we can meet in solitude, all goes as usual. Yet what do one's friends mean to one, if one only sees them eight times a year?... I use my friends rather as giglamps: there's another field I see; by your light. Over there's a hill. I widen my landscape.

Reality |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess – he was a woman.

Genius | Good | Ideas | Immortality | Need | Rest | Story | Style | Will |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

I understand Nature’s game—her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action—men, we assume, who don’t think. Still, there’s no harm in putting a full stop to one’s disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall.

Belief | Body | Children | Courage | Determination | Effort | Freedom | Habit | Life | Life | Little | Men | Need | Opportunity | Past | Poverty | Power | Reality | Talking | Will | World | Worth |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

That great Cathedral space which was childhood.

Ideas | Man | Poetry | World |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

To possess one single thing (it is Louis now) must waver, like the light in and out of the beech leaves; and then words, moving darkly, in the depths of your mind will break up this knot of hardness, screwed in your pocket-handkerchief.

Ideas |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

A perfect method for awakening is to examine the results of our daily actions. If they are harmful, we know we need more consciousness.

Failure | Ideas | Life | Life | Question | Failure |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Everyone is nothing but a collection of wild ideas. See them this way.

Ideas |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

What exactly is suffering? Our pains are caused by our wrong viewpoints toward things. The false self throws up an imaginary picture of how it insists things should be. And every time this 'should be' clashes with what actually happens, we react painfully. The problem is not what actually happens, but our demands that something else should happen. Don't take my word for this; experiment for yourself.

Ideas | Life | Life | Man | Thinking | Woman |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

We can accept God becoming man to save man, but not man becoming god to save himself.

Ideas | Reality |

Victor Hugo

Armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come.

Ideas | Thought | Thought |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

You are really one note in the Cosmic Music, harmonizing with other notes to form a grand symphony.

Awareness | Belief | Control | Ideas | Awareness |

Victor Hugo

Many great actions are committed in small struggles.

Ideas |

Victor Hugo

To love another person is to see the face of God

Duty | Ideas |