Great Throughts Treasury

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

Related Quotes

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

In this communication I wish first to show in the simplest case of the hydrogen atom (nonrelativistic and undistorted) that the usual rates for quantization can be replaced by another requirement, in which mention of ‘whole numbers’ no longer occurs. Instead the integers occur in the same natural way as the integers specifying the number of nodes in a vibrating string. The new conception can be generalized, and I believe it touches the deepest meaning of the quantum rules.

Atheism | Experience | God | Good | Nothing | Pain | Price | Reason | Science | Sense | Space | World | God |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

I can do what I want, but the trouble is that I do not quite know what to do.

Enjoyment | Love | Man | Pain | Pleasure | Sense |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

Without doubt it is natural to include that love long what we love so much.

Love | Man | Melancholy | Pain | Pleasure | Sense |

Eudora Welty

My tendency is to believe that all experience is an enrichment instead of an impoverishment.

Pain | Pleasure | Think |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

If I am not for myself the right to life, which has given the company?

Pain |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

I hold more and more surely to the conviction that the use of masks will be discovered eventually to be the freest solution of the modern dramatist's problem as to how -- with the greatest possible dramatic clarity and economy of means -- he can express those profound hidden conflicts of the mind which the probings of psychology continue to disclose to us.

Dirty | Little | Marriage | Pain | Play | Time | Ugly | Think |

Eugenio Montale

Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.

Pain |

Ezer Weizman

Give it a kick at the right place and it'll work.

Comfort | Pain | Sorrow | Will |

Felix Adler

The consolations of the moral ideal are vigorous. They do not encourage idle sentiment. They recommend to the sufferer action. Our loss, indeed, will always remain loss, and no preaching or teaching can ever make it otherwise. But the question is whether it shall weaken and embitter, or strengthen and purify us, and lead us to raise to the dead we mourn a monument in our lives that shall be better than any pillared chapel or storied marble tomb. The criterion of all right relations whatsoever is that we are helped by them. And so, too, the criterion of right relations to the dead is that we are helped, not weakened and disabled, by them.

Humanity | Meaning | Pain | Price | Progress | Right | Wrong | Learn |

Ezra Taft Benson

We honor these partners [friends outside the Church] because their devotion to correct principles overshadowed their devotion to popularity, party, or personalities. We honor our founding fathers of this republic for the same reason. God raised up these patriotic partners to perform their mission, and he called them “wise men.” The First Presidency acknowledged that wisdom when they gave us the guideline a few years ago of supporting political candidates “who are truly dedicated to the Constitution in the tradition of our Founding Fathers.”. . . Our wise founders seemed to understand, better than most of us, our own scripture, which states that “it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority . . . they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.” To help prevent this, the founders knew that our elected leaders should be bound by certain fixed principles. Said Thomas Jefferson: “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” These wise founders, our patriotic partners, seemed to appreciate more than most of us the blessings of the boundaries that the Lord set within the Constitution, for he said, “And as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil.” In God the founders trusted, and in his Constitution — not in the arm of flesh. “O Lord,” said Nephi, “I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; . . . cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm.”

Better | Children | Eternal | Freedom | Pain | Time | Wisdom | Loss |

Ezra Taft Benson

One good yardstick as to whether a person might be the right one for you is this: in her presence, do you think your noblest thoughts, do you aspire to your finest deeds, do you wish you were better than you are?

Appearance | Change | Character | Day | Disgrace | Heart | Important | Injustice | Injustice | Joy | Lesson | Pain | Parents | Peace | Play | Resolution | Understanding | Circumstance | Teacher |

Felix Adler

The platform of an Ethical Society is itself the altar; the address must be the fire that burns thereon.

Contrast | Life | Life | Love | Mortal | Pain | Peace | Sense | Thought | Time | Understanding | Thought |

Gustave Flaubert

Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful.

Pain |

Italian Proverbs

Who is in fear of every leaf must not go into the wood.

Men | Pain | Will |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

A small oversight, but it proved fatal. Small oversights often do.

Dreams | Goals | Hate | Love | Need | Pain | People | Regret | Forgive | Learn |