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

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

Undoubtedly this is all a problem of communications. But the only really effective communication is from man to man, face to face.

Action | Future |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, "Who are we?"

Future |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

The best that a parent can be... A demonstrator... A consistent, constant demonstrator of being in your own vortex.

Freedom | Will |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

Reach for a better feeling thought.

Future | Goals | Good |

Estonian Proverbs

Who seeks shame will find shame.

Past | Will |

Eugene Peterson

The danger that is a threat to obedience is that we should reduce Christian existence to ritually obeying a few commandments that are congenial to our temperament and convenient to our standard of living.

Bible | Good | Past | Bible | Old |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

The child was diseased at birth, stricken with a hereditary ill that only the most vital men are able to shake off. I mean poverty - the most deadly and prevalent of all diseases.

Beauty | Books | Freedom | Joy | Mystery | Need | Beauty |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

For de small stealing dey puts you in jail, soon or late. But for de big stealing dey puts yo' picture in de paper and yo' statue in de Hall of Fame when you croaks! If dey's one thing I learned in ten years, listenin' to de white quality on de Pullman cars, it's dat same fact. And when I gets a chance to use it -- from stowaway to Emperor in two years. Dat's goin' some!

Life | Life | Past | Peace | Unity |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

TYRONE: [Stares at him -- impressed.] Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. [Then protesting uneasily] But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND: [Sardonically] The makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.

Future | Past |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

Human reason feels at home in a world of things, whose essences and laws it can grasp and define in terms of concepts; but shy and ill at ease in a world of existences, because to exist is an act, not a thing.

Philosophy | Solitude |

Eugene Peterson

If we define the nature of our lives by the mistake of the moment or the defeat of the hour or the boredom of the day, we will define it wrongly. We need roots in the past to give obedience ballast and breadth; we need a vision of the future to give obedience direction and goal. There must be an organic unity between past and future lived in the present.

Experience | Feelings | Heart | Little | Need | Past | People | Will | Work | Value |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

Modern philosophy has been created by laymen, not by churchmen, and to the ends of the natural cities of men, not to the end of the supernatural city of God.

Freedom | Nothing | Will |

Eugene Peterson

If we're trying to set education policy, we have to listen to the education experts.

Defeat | Future | Mistake | Nature | Need | Obedience | Organic | Past | Unity | Vision | Will |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

For a moment I lost myself, actually lost my life. I was set free! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life . . . to life itself. I caught a glimpse of something greater than myself.

Beauty | Dawn | Freedom | Fulfillment | Good | Joy | Life | Life | Lying | Past | Peace | Sound | Unity | Vision | Beauty | Old |

Eugene Peterson

We live in a time when everyoneÂ’s goal is to be perpetually healthy and constantly happy. If any one of us fails to live up to the standards that are advertised as normative, we are labeled as a problem to be solved, and a host of well-intentioned people rush to try out various cures on us.

Evidence | Freedom | Society | Society |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!

Happy | Past |

Eudora Welty

For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

Art | Awareness | Mortal | Past | Present | Art | Awareness |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience, became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see, and seeing the secret, you are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on towards nowhere for no good reason.

Solitude | Will |