Great Throughts Treasury

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

David Atwood Wasson

American Minister and Transcendentalist Author, Essayist and Poet

"Authority is properly the servant of justice, and political powers are arbitrary and illegitimate if not based upon qualification for that service. This is the doctrine of the ethical derivation of authority or public power, as opposed to that of an unconditioned and inherent sovereignty."

"The great poets tell us nothing new. They remind us."

"To read the world as language, finding in it an import for the soul, is the essentially poetic act."