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

Tibetan Proverbs

At the bottom of patience is Heaven.

Friends |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

I don’t want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. If the gods would tax ecstasy, then I shall pay; however I shall protest their taxes at every opportunity – and if Wodon or Shiva or Buddha or that Christian fellow – what’s his name? – cannot respect that, then I accept their wrath.

Death | Doubt | Friends |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

Joy in spite of everything is yanking the bell rope despite physical affliction — it has become my Quasi Motto. One of my books is a hallucinogen, an aphrodisiac, a mood elevator, an intellectual garage door opener, and a metaphysical trash compactor.

Babble | Need | Friends |

William Shakespeare

All is not offence that indiscretion finds, and dotage terms so.

Art | Better | Death | Fortune | Grave | Heart | Right | Soul | Teach | Art | Friends |

William Shakespeare

And there at Venice gave His body to that pleasant country's earth, And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long.

Friends |

William Shakespeare

And thus I clothe my naked villany with old odd ends, stol'n out of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (Gloucester at I, iii)

Argument | Courtesy | Love | Mourning | Sorrow | Friends |

William Shakespeare

Black brows they say become some women best, so that there be not too much hair there, but in a semicircle, or a half-moon made with a pen.

Chance | Death | Life | Life | Love | Friends |

William Shakespeare

Censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. Julius Caesar, Act iii, Scene 2

Adventure | Better | Counsel | Fear | Little | Reputation | Strength | Will | Wishes | World | Counsel | Friends | Guilty |

William Shakespeare

Come, Kate, thou art perfect in lying down. Come, quick, quick, that I may lay my head in thy lap.

Art | Art | Friends |

William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters

The conqueror is regarded with awe the wise man commands our respect but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection

Reason | Sense | Friends |

William James

We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.

Friends |

William James

Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.

Friends |

William James

Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.

Friends |

William Morris

Ornamental pattern work, to be raised above the contempt of reasonable men, must possess three qualities: beauty, imagination and order.

Friends |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.

Esteem | Wise | Friends |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.

Adversity | Friends |