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

Italian Proverbs

To the person with little shame, the whole world is his.

Capacity | Self | Time | Unity |

Italian Proverbs

Where shall a man have a worse friend than he brings from home.

Necessity | Self | Theoretical |

Italian Proverbs

The world wags on with three things: doing, undoing, and pretending.

Ability | Adventure | Character | Comfort | Convictions | Daring | Ideas | Injustice | Injustice | Love | Man | Men | Qualities | Sound | Suffering | Talking | Time | Universe | Will | Witness | Blessed | Old | Winning |

Italian Proverbs

When the fox preaches, take care of yourselves, hens.

Self |

Italian Proverbs

Where the devil cannot put his head he puts his tail.

Self |

Italian Proverbs

Where the hedge is low everyone will cross it.

Enough | Self |

Italian Proverbs

When a man has fallen into the mire, the more he flounders the more he fouls himself.

Dishonesty | Life | Life | Little | People | Reason | Self | Sense | Truth | Words | Think |

Italian Proverbs

When the cat's away, the mice will play.

Self | Sense | World |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

In the development and the maintenance of a living organism the coordination is very clear. The development of each part can be shown to be dependent on that of other parts, including the immediate environment; and the more closely development and maintenance are studied the more evident does this become. But the particular manner in which the parts and the environment influence one another is such that the specific structure and activities of the organism are maintained. They are unmistakably developed and maintained as a whole, and this is what we mean when we say that the organism lives a specific life. The conception of its life enables us to predict the general behavior of its parts so long as it is alive, and in particular it enables us to predict the general manner of its reproduction from a rudimentary part of the same organism? it is this co-ordinated maintenance that we call life.

Life | Life | Man |

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

Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.

Man |

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

Any corner of that county (however fair or squalid) is in an indefinable way 'home' to me, as no other part of the world is. There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there. I never forgot that.

Existence | Hope | Important | Man | Woman |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats.

Man | Reading | Will |

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

If you mean you think it is my job to go into the secret passage first, O Thorin Thrain?s son Oakenshield, may your beard grow ever longer, he said crossly, say so at once and have done!

Man |

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

Friendship with Lewis compensates for much, and besides giving constant pleasure and comfort has done me much good from the contact with a man at once honest, brave, intellectual--a scholar, a poet, and a philosopher--and a lover, at least after a long pilgrimage, of Our Lord.

Self |

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

I wonder if people will ever say, Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring. And they'll say, Yes, that's one of my favorite stories. Frodo was really courageous, wasn't he, Dad? Yes, m'boy, the most famousest of hobbits. And that's saying a lot.

Man |

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

In those days of our tale, there were still some people who had both elves and heroes of the North for ancestors and Elrond, the master of the house, was their chief. He was as noble and as fair in face as an elf lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves and as kind as summer.

Man | Wise |

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

I?ll bet I?m the first person to compare Bill Johnson to an old elf!

Man |

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

I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the Ages of this world alone.

Man | Wise |