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

Ernest Becker

Not everyone is as honest as Freud was when he said that he cured the miseries of the neurotic only to open him up to the normal misery of life.

Anxiety | Anxiety | Body | Death | Education | Man | Means | Mistake | Taste | Will | Child |

Ernest Bramah, born Ernest Brammah Smith

"Excellence," besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings, "how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?" "For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest," was the confident response. "In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye."

Awareness | Body | Death | Dreams | Fate | Knowledge | Man | Nature | Order | Will | World | Fate | Awareness |

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

There was a time when the one singular thing that held a marriage together was the threat of getting the kids.

Body | Wants |

Ernest Becker

For all organisms, then, opposing and obliterating power is evil – it threatens to stop experience. But men are truly sorry creatures because they have made death conscious. They can see evil in anything that wounds them, causes ill health, or even deprives them of pleasure. Consciousness means too that they have to be preoccupied with evil even in the absence of any immediate danger; their lives become a meditation on evil and a planned venture for controlling it and forestalling it.

Body | Contradiction | Man | People | Worth |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

And that was the end of the beginning of that

Better | Body | Happy | Old |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

Better | Body | Happy | Old |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.

Events | Obligation | Presumption |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.

Good |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

This was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other.

Ability | Death | Despise | Harm | Necessity | Responsibility | Talent |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

The value of the life of these lower savages is like that of the anthropoid apes, or very little higher. All recent travelers who have carefully observed them in their native lands, and studied their bodily structure and psychic life, agree in this opinion.

Appreciation | Body | Science | Appreciation | Learn |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.

Body | Consciousness | Greatness | Men | Nothing | Position | Race | System | Theories | Truth | Will | Truths |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

A petty concern with mere evidence is an antiquated and bourgeois feature of the captalist legal system. We are revolutionaries. We convict from a revolutionary passion.

Obligation | Order | Loss |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man's work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it equally their products.

Obligation |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

The law of attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet getting more and more of the way you FEEL.

Achievement | Attainment | Body | Joy | Money | Possessions | Property | Success |

Eugene Peterson

Have no fear about doing so, for we have a “warts-and-all” religion.

Cause | Children | Family | God | Grace | Mind | God | Learn |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

So we must try to distinguish between two questions that are often confused in this discussion. Is the existence of God a truth demonstrable by natural reason, so that it is knowable and known with certitude? Without a doubt the answer to this first question is “yes.” The second question is whether everyone can consider his natural reason infallible in its effort to demonstrate rationally the existence of God? The merciless criticism of the proofs of St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Descartes, Malebranche and many others are timely reminders of the need for modesty. Are we keener philosophers than they? That is the whole question. Modesty is not skepticism. So we should not be afraid to let our mind pursue the proof of God’s existence until we reach the greatest possible certitude, but we should keep intact our faith in the word that reveals this truth to the most simple folk as well as to the most learned. Here it is well to meditate on the very complex and nuanced passage in ST 2-2.2.4: “Is it necessary to believe what can be proved by natural reason?” The answer is in the affirmative: “We must accept by faith not only what is above reason but also what can be known by reason.”

Beginning | Body | Experience | Giving | Life | Life | Looks | Philosophy | Wisdom | Learn |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

In fact, the French - who read and theorise the most - became so addicted to political experiment that in the two centuries since our own rather drab revolution they have exuberantly produced one Directory, one Consulate, two empires, three restorations of the monarchy, and five republics. That's what happens when you take writing too seriously.

Birth | Contradiction | Life | Life |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

And now for all of us to do our duty! The clarion call is ringing in our ears and we cannot falter without being convicted of treason to ourselves and to our great cause. Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth. Yes, in good time we are going to sweep into power in this nation and throughout the world. We are going to destroy all enslaving and degrading capitalist institutions and re-create them as free and humanizing institutions. The world is daily changing before our eyes. The sun of capitalism is setting; the sun of socialism is rising. It is our duty to build the new nation and the free republic.

Duty | Obligation |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

I would no more teach children military training than teach them arson, robbery, or assassination.

Body | Love | People | Friends |