Great Throughts Treasury

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

Mary Hunter Austin

American Writer

"Ride your emotions as a scallop rides the waves; don't get upset among them. There are people who enjoy getting swamped emotionally just as, incredibly, there are people who enjoy getting drunk."

"We are not all born at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later... Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth."

"Cattle once down may be days in dying. They stretch out their necks along the ground, and roll up their slow eyes at longer intervals."

"For one thing there is the divinest, cleanest air to be breathed anywhere in God's world."

"Death by starvation is slow."

"From the time that he had first found, himself alone with them, Oliver had felt sure that the animals could come alive again if they wished."

"I suppose no man becomes a pocket hunter by first intention."

"I think it went very well. We can always find things to improve, that's why we do drills."

"If you are not at your ideal body weight and are not active, over time, you have a risk of diabetes."

"Man is a great blunderer going about in the woods, and there is no other except the bear makes so much noise."

"Nevertheless there are certain peaks, canons, and clear meadow spaces which are above all compassing of words, and have a certain fame as of the nobly great to whom we give no familiar names."

"No man can be stronger than his destiny."

"Nothing the desert produces expresses it better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas."

"I am persuaded that the coyotes in my valley, which is narrow and beset with steep, sharp hills, in long passages steer by the pinnacles of the sky-line, going with head cocked to one side to keep to the left or right of such and such a promontory."

"Genius . . . arises in the natural, aboriginal concern for the conscious unity of all phenomena."

"Our emergency preparedness is always an ongoing priority. We're constantly working on it at the Clinic and drills like these help us work even closer with the emergency agencies to build a closer, more effective relationship."

"Over the tops of it, beginning to dusk under a young white moon, trailed a wavering ghost of smoke, and at the end of it I came upon the Pocket Hunter making a dry camp in the friendly scrub."

"People would be surprised to know how much I learned about prayer from playing poker."

"Probably we never fully credit the interdependence of wild creatures, and their cognizance of the affairs of their own kind."

"Since this is a hill country one expects to find springs, but not to depend upon them; for when found they are often brackish and unwholesome, or maddening, slow dribbles in a thirsty soil."

"So wide is the range of the scavengers that it is never safe to say, eyewitness to the contrary, that there are few or many in such a place."

"The demand for rhubarb is still there."

"The manner of the country makes the usage of life there, and the land will not be lived in except in its own fashion."

"There are many areas in the desert where drinkable water lies within a few feet of the surface, indicated by the mesquite and the bunch grass."

"These findings are very reflective of what we see around the world. The rise in weight and obesity is being seen globally."

"They felt our system plan worked very well but communications could have been improved."

"This is the sense of the desert hills, that there is room enough and time enough."

"To underestimate one's thirst, to pass a given landmark to the right or left, to find a dry spring where one looked for running water - there is no help for any of these things."

"We try to vary the drills every year to test different parts of our response efforts."

"What women have to stand on squarely is not their ability to see the world in the way men see it, but the importance and validity of their seeing it in some other way."

"When a woman ceases to alter the fashion of her hair, you guess that she has passed the crisis of her experience."