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

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

We can recognize the absolute transcendence of revelation by the curious fact of the philosophical and theological multiple meanings of the texts of scripture. When St. Thomas was looking for a sed contra for his question on the existence of God, he does not seem to have found a text in which Yahweh says in so many words, “I exist.” So he had recourse to the statement of Exodus: Ego sum qui sum. But that statement is a reply to the question Moses put to God: When the people ask me who has sent me to them, what shall I answer?

Existence | God | Philosophy | Reason | Sacred | Simplicity | Work | God |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Although Americans justify their self-interest in moral terms, their true interest is never itself moral.

Common Sense | Sense | Think |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.

Despair | Individual | Land | Man | People | Sense | Will | Woman |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.

Good | Human race | Nature | Race | Reason | Worth |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Before the cards that one is dealt by life are the cards that fate has dealt: one's family.

Balance | Life | Life | Nothing | Reason |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.

Language | Little | Nothing | Sense | Writing |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

What the workingmen of the country are profoundly interested in is the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, the enslaving and degrading wage-system in which they toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are bludgeoned, jailed or shot when they protest — this is the central, controlling, vital issue of the hour, and neither of the old party platforms has a word or even a hint about it. As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class.

Age | Awakening | Conquest | Duty | Glory | History | Nothing | Object | Reason | War | Wealth | World |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general "They tell lies," he used to say with wonder, "even when they don't have to".

Family | Life | Life | Sense |

Eustace Budgell

In short, a private education seems the most natural method for the forming of a virtuous man; a public education for making a man of business. The first would furnish out a good subject for PlatoÂ’s republic, the latter a member for a community overrun with artifice and corruption.

Education | Means | Men | Nothing | Order | Reason | Service | Temper | Think |

Eustace Budgell

Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

Better | Consideration | God | Mankind | Mind | Opinion | Reason | Tradition | Truth | Following | God | Think |

Eugenio Montale

Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light, to the feet, thin ice that cracks; and so may no one touch you who loves you.

Reason |

Eustace Budgell

Those who have searched into human nature observe that nothing so much shows the nobleness of the soul, as that its felicity consists in action. Every man has such an active principle in him that he will find out something to employ himself upon, in whatever place or state of life he is posted.

Conversation | Discretion | Giving | Good | Love | Man | Nothing | Sense |

Euripedes NULL

May he die with no joy at his end, The man who won't be troubled To unlock the keys of his heart and make a friend.

Sense |

Eustace Budgell

His tawny beard was thÂ’ equal grace both of his wisdom and his face; in cut and dye so like a tile, a sudden view it would beguile; the upper part thereof was whey, the nether, orange mixt with gray.

Blush | Man | Reason |

Eugenio Montale

Far away, I was with you when your father entered in the shadows and left you his farewell.

Sense |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it."

Anarchy | Discovery | Love | Peace | Rest | Sense | World | Discovery | Old |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Lord Copper quite often gave banquets; it would be an understatement to say that no one enjoyed them more than the host, for no one else enjoyed them at all, while Lord Copper positively exulted in every minute.

Language | Reason | Right |

Evelyn Underhill

The business and method of mysticism is love.

Important | Life | Life | Reading | Sense | Wonder |