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

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Age | Care | Childhood | Children | Danger | Treachery | Wife | Wise | Danger | Friends |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.

Better | Chance | Enough | Man | Will |

Samuel Richardson

An honest heart is not to be trusted with itself in bad company.

Childhood | Trifles |

Samuel Lover

When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.

Childhood |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

In some place in my soul, in a very hidden corner, I am a fanatical Jew. I am very much astonished to discover myself as such in spite of all efforts to be unprejudiced and impartial. What can I do against it at my age?

Childhood | Children | Enough | Mankind | Religion | Will |

Sydney J. Harris

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice--that is, until we have stopped saying It got lost, and say, I lost it.

Childhood |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.

Childhood | Need | Think |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur of religion, one must keep in mind what it undertakes to do for men. It gives them information about the source and origin of the universe, it assures them of protection and final happiness amid the changing vicissitudes of life, and it guides their thoughts and motions by means of precepts which are backed by the whole force of its authority.

Childhood | Individual | Religion |

Simone Weil

It is because of my wretchedness that I am I. It is on account of the wretchedness of the universe that, in a sense, God is I (that is to say a person).

Chance | Eternal | Hunger | Obligation |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.

Better | Chance | Man |

Simone Weil

Men ... ask nothing better, it would seem, than to leave their destiny, their life, and all their thoughts in the hands of a few men with a gift for the exclusive manipulation of this or that technique.

Chance | Father | Meditation | Mother |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Thus we obtain our concept of the unconscious from the theory of repression. The repressed is the prototype of the unconscious for us.

Care | Childhood | Children | Consolation | Insignificance | Life | Life | Men | Necessity | Need | Object | Position | Purpose | Purpose | Troubles | Will | Child |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Religion... comprises a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find in an isolated form nowhere else but in amentia, in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion.

Childhood | Children | Mankind | Will |

Simone Weil

He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.

Chance | Fortune | Illusion | Love | Man | Necessity | Regard | Respect | Respect |

Alexander Fleming, fully Sir Alexander Fleming

It has been demonstrated that a species of penicillium produces in culture a very powerful antibacterial substance which affects different bacteria in different degrees. Generally speaking it may be said that the least sensitive bacteria are the Gram-negative bacilli, and the most susceptible are the pyogenic cocci ... In addition to its possible use in the treatment of bacterial infections penicillin is certainly useful... for its power of inhibiting unwanted microbes in bacterial cultures so that penicillin insensitive bacteria can readily be isolated.

Chance | Literature | Merit | Neglect | Observation | Study | Truth | Work |

Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

In horror, in terror, she accepted the metamorphosis — gnat, foam, ant, until death. And it's only the beginning, she thought. She stood motionless, as if it were possible to play tricks with time, possible to stop it from following its course. But her hands stiffened against her quivering lips. When the bells began to sound the hour she let out the first scream.

Absolute | Abstract | Childhood | Contempt | Desire | Fighting | Ideas | Nothing | Order | Paradise | Reality | Suffering | World |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

Nigel looked at her with sparkling eyes. The soul which shone through her dark face had transformed it for the moment into a beauty, more lofty and more rare than that of her shallow sister. He bowed before the majesty of the woman, and pressed his lips to her hand.

Better | Chance | Trust |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

I have learned never to ridicule any man's opinion, however strange it may seem.

Wickedness |