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

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Saints are simply men and women who have fulfilled their natural obligation which is to approach God.

Man | Rest |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she felt things had been simplified.

Age | Man | Thought | Thought |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

They should have told me that at the end of that gay journey and flower-strewn path were the hideous lights of home and the voices of children.

Hope | Lord | Wants | War | Will |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Words should be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a shoemaker

Bride | Man |

Eustace Budgell

In short, nothing is more wanting to our public schools than that the masters of them should use the same care in fashioning the manners of their scholars as in forming their tongues to the learned languages. Wherever the former is omitted, I cannot help agreeing with Mr. Locke, that a man must have a very strange value for words, when, preferring the languages of the Greeks and Romans to that which made them such brave men, he can think it worthwhile to hazard the innocence and virtue of his son for a little Greek and Latin.

Artifice | Education | Good | Man | Method | Public |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

No.3 Commando was very anxious to be chums with Lord Glasgow, so they offered to blow up an old tree stump for him and he was very grateful and said don't spoil the plantation of young trees near it because that is the apple of my eye and they said no of course not we can blow a tree down so it falls on a sixpence and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever and he asked them all to luncheon for the great explosion. So Col. Durnford-Slater DSO said to his subaltern, have you put enough explosive in the tree?. Yes, sir, 75lbs. Is that enough? Yes sir I worked it out by mathematics it is exactly right. Well better put a bit more. Very good sir. And when Col. D Slater DSO had had his port he sent for the subaltern and said subaltern better put a bit more explosive in that tree. I don't want to disappoint Lord Glasgow. Very good sir. Then they all went out to see the explosion and Col. DS DSO said you will see that tree fall flat at just the angle where it will hurt no young trees and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever. So soon they lit the fuse and waited for the explosion and presently the tree, instead of falling quietly sideways, rose 50 feet into the air taking with it ½ acre of soil and the whole young plantation. And the subaltern said Sir, I made a mistake, it should have been 7½ not 75. Lord Glasgow was so upset he walked in dead silence back to his castle and when they came to the turn of the drive in sight of his castle what should they find but that every pane of glass in the building was broken. So Lord Glasgow gave a little cry and ran to hide his emotions in the lavatory and there when he pulled the plug the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head. This is quite true.

Books | Will |

Ezer Weizman

Leave my image alone... I will behave as I think I should and I will not change anything.

Good |

Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie

If we see someone in a wheelchair, we assume they cannot walk. It may be that they can walk three, four, five steps. That, to them, means they can walk.

Dynamic |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

A copy of Dante's Purgatorio excited his especial disgust. "French, eh?" he said. "I guessed as much, and pretty dirty too, I shouldn't wonder. Now just you wait while I look up these here books"—how he said it!—"in my list. Particularly against books the Home Secretary is. If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside."

Civilization | Force | Man | Wishes | Work |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them -- a diminishing number in my case.

Evan Esar

Shakespeare murdered Hamlet, and a great many Hamlets have murdered Shakespeare.

Ends | Man |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

No one will write books once they reach heaven, but there is an excellent library, containing all the books written up to date, including all the lost books and the ones that the authors burned when they came back from the last publisher.

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.

Reason |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

The langor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.

Chance | Heaven | Knowing | Man | Soul | World |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning.

Man | Woman | Youth | Youth |

Evan Esar

Many a man who goes to Las Vegas to get away from it all soon finds that Las Vegas gets it all away from him.

Love | Man | Mistake |

Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie

And as I grew older, I then auditioned for the Royal Academy of Music in London, and they said, well, no, we won't accept you, because we haven't a clue - you know - of the future of a so-called 'deaf' musician. And I just couldn't quite accept that.

Will |

Evelyn Underhill

"I come to seek God because I need Him," may be an adequate formula for prayer. "I come to adore His splendour, and fling myself and all that I have at His feet," is the only possible formula for worship.

Individuality |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.

Experience | Time |