Great Throughts Treasury

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

Judgment

"Since the affairs of men rest still incertain, let's reason with the worst that may befall." - William Shakespeare

"I have had good experience and trial of this world...I know what it is to be a subject, what to be a sovereign, what to have good neighbors, and sometimes meet evil willers. I have found treason in trust, seen great benefits little regarded." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an 'Annus Horribilis'." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"Have you ever reflected that posterity may not be the faultless dispenser of justice that we dream of? One consoles oneself for being insulted and denied, by reyling on the equity of the centuries to come; just as the faithful endure all the abominations of this earth in the firm belief of another life, in which each will be rewarded according to his deserts. But suppose Paradise exists no more for the artist than it does for the Catholic, suppose that future generations prolong the misunderstanding and prefer amiable little trifles to vigorous works! Ah! What a sell it would be, eh? To have led a convict's life - to have screwed oneself down to one's work - all for a mere delusion! Bah! What does it matter? Well, there's nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman. When the earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won't add one atom to its dust." - Emile Zola

"I cannot believe that God would make to a sinner in his wants and his woes the tender of a relief which did not exist, or which he did not wish him to embrace; I cannot believe that God would command his creatures to embrace a provision which had never been made for them, or sanction by the peril of one’s everlasting interests a commandment which he never meant should be obeyed, and which itself precluded the possibility of obedience." - Erskine Mason

"It is upsetting to many parents that their teen-agers introduce them to their friends as encyclopedia salesmen who are just passing through ... if they introduce them at all. I have some acquaintances who hover in dark parking lots, enter church separately and crouch in furnace rooms so their teen-agers will not be accused of having parents." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

"The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things." - Ernest Dimnet

"In 1968, the party became a kind of unrelated bloc of factions ... each refusing accommodation with another, each wanting control at the expense of all the others." - Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

"I understand too well the dreadful act I'm going to commit, but my judgment can't check my anger, and that incites the greatest evils human beings do." - Euripedes NULL

"I would prefer as friend a good man ignorant than one more clever who is evil too." - Euripedes NULL

"Only those who try to live near God and have formed the habit of faithfulness to Him in the small things of our daily life, can hope in times of need for that special light which shows us our path. To do as well as we can the job immediately before us, is the way to learn what we ought to do next." - Evelyn Underhill

"Our Creator endowed each one of us with certain rights at birth, among which are the rights to life, liberty, speech, and conscience, to name a few. These are not just human rights; they are divine rights. When these rights are not permitted expression by a nation, that nation becomes inhibited in its progress and development, and its leaders are responsible before God for suffocating sacred rights. This native endowment is what separates man from the animals. It causes men to want to be good and to seek higher aspirations. It creates in man a desire to better his life and his station in life." - Ezra Taft Benson

"No human life, not even the life of the hermit in nature?s wilderness, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings." - Hannah Arendt

"My experience from 20 years of Africa is that the seemingly impossible is possible." - Hans Rosling

"The ass does not know the worth of this tail till he has lost it." - Italian Proverbs

"Today for me, and tomorrow for you." - Italian Proverbs