Great Throughts Treasury

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

Nothing

"The moral improvement of the nations and their individual components has not kept pace with the march of intellect and the advance of industry. Before the assaults of criticism many ancient strongholds of faith have given way, and doubt is fast spreading even into circles where its expression is forbidden. Morality, long accustomed to the watchful tutelage of faith, finds this connection loosened or severed, while no new protector has arisen to champion her rights, no new instruments been created to enforce her lessons among the people. As a consequence we behold a general laxness in regard to obligations the most sacred and dear. An anxious unrest, a fierce craving desire for gain has taken possession of the commercial world, and in instances no longer rare the most precious and permanent goods of human life have been madly sacrificed in the interests of momentary enrichment." - Felix Adler

"What I state as certain is certain for me. It has approved itself as such in my experience. Let others consult their experience, and see how far it tallies with that which is here set forth." - Felix Adler

"There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one?s vanity?the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women." - Gustave Flaubert

"Spirit is being-within-itself (self-contained existence). But this, precisely, is freedom. For when I am dependent, I refer myself to something else which I am not; I cannot exist independently of something external. I am free when I am within myself. This self-contained existence of spirit is self-consciousness, consciousness of self." - Gustavo GutiƩrrez

"Life may not be exactly pleasant, but it is at least not dull. Heave yourself into Hell today, and you may miss, tomorrow or next day, another Scopes trial, or another War to End War, or perchance a rich and buxom widow with all her first husband's clothes. There are always more Hardings hatching. I advocate hanging on as long as possible." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all other men are just as easy to fool." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"When we consider the time which is necessary to fulfill the needs of an individual it will easily be understood that the needs of a vast country like Ethiopia can only be filled progressively and by stages. For the life of the world is such that periods of constructive achievement are followed by periods of destruction: the period of construction brings peace and the period of destruction brings uncertainty. We have always kept in mind that the union of the spiritual strength of the people with the material power of the independent nation provides the firm basis for our people to overcome the hardships and difficulties of life facing them in this world." - Haile Selassie

"Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it." - Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland

"Consider the wheelbarrow. It may lack the grace of an airplane, the speed of an automobile, the initial capacity of a freight car, but its humble wheel marked out the path of what civilization we still have." - Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland

"And what else is, finally, this ideal of modern society, if not the old dream of the poor and of the indigent, which can have a charm as long as it remains a dream, but it becomes a fool's paradise as soon as it is made?" - Hannah Arendt

"Augustine? diagnoses the ultimate unifying will that eventually decides a man?s conduct as Love. Love is the ?weight of the soul,? its law of gravitation, that which brings the soul?s movement to its rest." - Hannah Arendt

"To be one of God's lilies means an interior abandonment of the rarest kind. It means that we are to be infinitely passive, and yet infinitely active also; passive as regards self and its workings, active as regards attention and response to God. It is very hard to explain this so as to be understood But it means that we must lay down all the activity of the creature, as such, and must let only the activities of God work in us, and through us, and by us. Self must step aside, to let God work." - Hannah Whitall Smith

"This two-way transformation proceeds from metaphysical perceptions, for metaphysics is the search for the essential nature of reality. And so artistic creation is the metamorphosis of the external physical aspects of a thing into a self-sustaining spiritual reality. Such is the magic act which takes place continuously in the development of a work of art. On this and only on this is creation based." - Hans Hoffman

"To sense the invisible and to be able to create it ? that is art." - Hans Hoffman

"If heat were the affecting force, direct indications of its presence could be found which would not make use of geometry as an indirect method. ...direct evidence for the presence of heat is based on the fact that it affects different materials in different ways. ...The forces... which we have introduced... have two properties: (a) They affect all materials in the same way. (b) There are no insulating [or isolating] walls... the definition of the insulating wall may be added here: it is a covering made of any kind of material which does not act upon the enclosed object with forces having property a. Let us call the forces which have the properties a and b universal forces; all other forces are called differential forces. Then it can be said that differential forces, but not universal forces, are directly demonstrable." - Hans Reichenbach

"Of what does not concern you say nothing, good or bad." - Italian Proverbs

"One eye of the master sees more than four eyes of his servants." - Italian Proverbs

"One may have good eyes and see nothing." - Italian Proverbs

"The man who knows two languages is worth two men." - Italian Proverbs

"The man who lives only by hope will die with despair." - Italian Proverbs

"When the danger is past God is cheated." - Italian Proverbs

"When the sun is highest it casts the least shadow." - Italian Proverbs

"You must grease the wheels if you would have the car run." - Italian Proverbs

"Every year we're spending more than two trillion dollars on healthcare, and yet 100,000 people a year are dying not because of the conditions they have, but because of the treatments that we're giving them." - Ivan Oransky

"Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"If human beings could be propagated by cutting, like apple trees, aristocracy would be biologically sound." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

"A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which his long white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots. Good morning! said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat. What do you mean? he said. Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I wish it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on? All of them at once, said Bilbo. And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain. Then Bilbo sat down on a seat by his door, crossed his legs, and blew out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over The Hill." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"And long there he lay, an image of the splendor of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Frodo stood up. He had laughed in the midst of all his cares when Sam trotted out the old fireside rhyme of Oliphant, and the laugh had released him from hesitation. 'I wish we had a thousand oliphants with Gandalf on a white one at their head,' he said. 'Then we'd break a way into this evil land, perhaps. But we've not; just our own tired legs, that's all. Well, Smeagol, the third turn may turn the best. I will come with you." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"He is not half through yet, and to what he will come in the end not even Elrond can foretell. Not to evil, I think. He may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"He knew that all the hazards and perils were now drawing together to a point: the next day would be a day of doom, the day of final effort or disaster, the last gasp." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"I am Aragorn son of Arathorn, and am called Elessar the Elfstone, Dunadan. The heir of Isildur Elendil's son of Gondor. Here is the Sword that was Broken and is forged again! Will you aid me, or thwart me? Choose swiftly!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien