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

Socialists should insist on using the nationalized industries not simply to out-capitalize the capitalists—an attempt in which they may or may not succeed—but to evolve a more democratic and dignified system of industrial administration, a more humane employment of machinery, and a more intelligent utilization of the fruits of human ingenuity and effort.

Ability | Courage | Growth | Man |

Ethiopian Proverbs

A single stick may smoke, but it will not burn.

Daughter | Mother |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed.

Ability | Absolute |

Euripedes NULL

Of all the evils that infest a state, a tyrant is the greatest; his sole will commands the laws, and lords it over them.

Daughter | Evil | Father | God | Gold | Good | Heaven | Mind | Nature | Nothing | Order | Wife | Will | God |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

We class schools, you see, into four grades: Leading School, First-rate School, Good School, and School. Frankly, said Mr Levy, School is pretty bad... (Part One, Chapter One)

Ability | Friends |

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Don't waste time learning the "tricks of the trade." Instead, learn the trade.

Daughter |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator, and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them. A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.

Daughter |

Italian Proverbs

On every small pretext the wolf seizes the sheep.

Ability | Fault | Mind | Fault |

Italian Proverbs

Never let the bottom of your purse or of your mind be seen.

Ability | Focus |

Italian Proverbs

No good lawyer ever goes to court himself.

Ability | Balance | Technology | Work |

Italian Proverbs

Substance is not enough, accident is also required.

Ability | Coercion | Power |

Italian Proverbs

The fear of war is worse than war itself.

Ability | Reason | Story | Thinking |

Italian Proverbs

The devil is bad because he is old.

Ability | Age | Art | Control | Culture | Humor | Memory | Need | Time | Work | World | Art |

Italian Proverbs

The world wags on with three things: doing, undoing, and pretending.

Ability | Adventure | Character | Comfort | Convictions | Daring | Ideas | Injustice | Injustice | Love | Man | Men | Qualities | Sound | Suffering | Talking | Time | Universe | Will | Witness | Blessed | Old | Winning |

Italian Proverbs

When his head is broken he puts on his helmet.

Ability | Unity |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

I'm in the business of providing people with secondary satisfactions. It wouldn't have done me much good if they had all written their own plays, would it?

Ability | Change | Experience | Important | Myth | Qualities | Reading | Space | Time |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

A synopsis is a cold thing. You do it with the front of your mind. If you're going to stay with it, you never get quite the same magic as when you're going all out.

Ability | Change | Experience | Important | Qualities | Reading | Space | Time |

Italian Proverbs

Wise men change their minds, fools never.

Ability | Attention | Day | Good | Greed | Habit | People | Selfishness |

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

But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes? Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel-blade, fair yet terrible. A swift stroke she dealt, skilled and deadly. The outstretched neck she clove asunder, and the hewn head fell like a stone. Backward she sprang as the huge shape crashed to ruin, vast wings outspread, crumpled on the earth; and with its fall the shadow passed away. A light fell about her, and her hair shone in the sunrise.

Ability | Better | People | Position | Space | World | Think | Understand |