Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Despise

"It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end." - Thomas Hobbes

"A living creature develops a destructive impulse when it wants to destroy a source of danger. In this case, the destruction or killing of the object is the biologically purposeful goal. The original motive is not pleasure in destruction. Rather the destruction serves the “life instinct”…and is an attempt to avoid anxiety and to preserve the ego in its totality. I destroy in a dangerous situation because I want to live and do not want to have any anxiety. In short, the impulse to destroy serves a primary biological will to live." - Wilhelm Reich

"The absolute and static were even taken over by such dynamically oriented psychological schools as the Freudian in the form of the permanent unconscious ideas. In Jung, the unconscious psychic life was enlarged to the static "racial unconscious" and to the static "collective unconscious". Along with the static viewpoint, these psychologies took over the idea of guilt, even after their separation from philosophy. In so doing, they fell into a cul de sac from which there was no way out." - Wilhelm Reich

"You have no sense of your true duty, which is to be a man and preserve humanity. You imitate wise men so badly and bandits so well. Your movies and radio programs are full of murder." - Wilhelm Reich

"All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments" - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are, Buds to be unfolded on the old terms; If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, color, perfume, to you; If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall blanches and trees." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,) to cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"For prayer is nothing less than an ascent to the heart of God and its withdrawal from all Earthly thoughts. Therefore prayer is compared with fire, which in its own nature always leaves the Earth and Leaps into the air." - Walter Hilton

"You fear the books as some towns feared the violins. Keep reading, and let dance; these two amusements will never do harm to the world." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"If you go off to die, then take us, too, to face all things with you; but if your past still lets you put your hope in arms, which now you have put on, then first protect this house." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL

"The remedy for the Great Depression is to give the workers access to the means of production, and let them produce for themselves, not for others… the American way." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"This is a great sign of mediocrity always moderately to rent." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"Those who do not take advantage of other men can usually accessible." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"We despise the great designs when you do not feel capable of great success." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"We did not play long in the minds of others." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"We don't have enough time to premeditate all our actions." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"Doctrine is the necessary foundation of duty; if the theory is not correct, the practice cannot be right, - Tell me what a man believes, and I will tell you what he will do." - Tryon Edwards

"It is... particularly true of constitutional government that its atmosphere is opinion... It does not remain fixed in any unchanging form, but grows with the growth and is altered with the change of the nation's needs and purposes." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"Art is man's expression of his joy in labor." - William Morris

"We are not told of things that happened to specific people exactly as they happened; but the beginning is when there are good things and bad things, things that happen in this life which one never tires of seeing and hearing about, things which one cannot bear not to tell of and must pass on for all generations. If the storyteller wishes to speak well, then he chooses the good things; and if he wishes to hold the reader’s attention he chooses bad things, extraordinarily bad things. Good things and bad things alike, they are things of this world and no other. Writers in other countries approach the matter differently. Old stories in our own are different from new. There are differences in the degree of seriousness. But to dismiss them as lies is itself to depart from the truth. Even in the writ which the Buddha drew from his noble heart are parables, devices for pointing obliquely at the truth. To the ignorant they may seem to operate at cross purposes. The Greater Vehicle is full of them, but the general burden is always the same. The difference between enlightenment and confusion is of about the same order as the difference between the good and the bad in a romance. If one takes the generous view, then nothing is empty and useless." - Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki

"One who obeys himself suffocates as surely as one who obeys others." - Elias Canetti

"Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?" - Emil M. Cioran

"When you find yourself thinking that your prayer cannot be answered for any reason - treat that reason. When something says that you cannot demonstrate "because" - treat the because. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because I have not enough understanding, treat for understanding. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because I have a headache - treat the headache. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because I am full of doubts - treat the doubts. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because it is now too late - treat against the time illusion. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because in this part of the country - treat against space illusion. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because of my age - treat your age belief. When you think, I cannot demonstrate because someone else will hinder me - treat the belief in a power other than God. No matter what name the because may give itself, it is still your belief in limitation. Be loyal to God and know that He and He alone has all the power. Treat the because." - Emmet Fox

"This was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other." -

"The most difficult province in friendship is the letting a man see his faults and errors; which should, if possible, be so contrived that he may perceive our advice is given him not so much to please ourselves as for his own advantage. The reproaches, therefore, of a friend should always be strictly just, and not too frequent." - Eustace Budgell