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

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales - because they find them romantic. In fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him.

Boys | Wisdom |

Benjamin Spock, fully Benjamin McLane Spock

The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children and the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.

Children | Good | People | Wisdom |

Lincoln Steffens, fully Joseph Lincoln Steffens

A child awakened out of a deep sleep, expressed all the crying babies and all the weeping idealists in the world. "Oh, dear," he said, "I have lost my place in my dream."

Wisdom | World | Child |

Louisa May Alcott

Father asked us what was God's noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad, but babies never are.

Men |

Louise J. Kaplan

In every adult human there still lives a helpless child who is afraid of aloneness.... This would be so even if there were a possibility for perfect babies and perfect mothers.

Afraid | Child |

P. J. O'Rourke

The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors--psychology, sociology, women's studies--to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view.

Free will | Hate | Nothing | Responsibility | Will |

Peter Singer

As far as food is concerned, the great extravagance is not caviar or truffles, but beef, pork and poultry. Some 38 percent of the world's grain crop is now fed to animals, as well as large quantities of soybeans. There are three times as many domestic animals on this planet as there are human beings. The combined weight of the world's 1.28 billion cattle alone exceeds that of the human population. While we look darkly at the number of babies being born in poorer parts of the world, we ignore the over-population of farm animals, to which we ourselves contribute... that, however, is only part of the damage done by the animals we deliberately breed. The energy intensive factory farming methods of the industrialized nations are responsible for the consumption of huge amounts of fossil fuels. Chemical fertilizers, used to grow the feed crops for cattle in feedlots and pigs and chickens kept indoors in sheds, produce nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas. Then there is the loss of forests. Everywhere, forest-dwellers, both human and non-human, can be pushed out. Since 1960, 25 percent of the forests of Central America have been cleared for cattle. Once cleared, the poor soils will support grazing for a few years; then the graziers must move on. Shrub takes over the abandoned pasture, but the forest does not return. When the forests are cleared so the cattle can graze, billions of tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. Finally, the world's cattle are thought to produce about 20 percent of the methane released into the atmosphere, and methane traps twenty-five times as much heat from the sun as carbon dioxide. Factory farm manure also produces methane because, unlike manured dropped naturally in the fields, it dies not decompose in the presence of oxygen. All of this amounts to a compelling reason... for a plant based diet.

Energy | Extravagance | Nations | Thought | Will | Loss | Thought |

Hillary Rodham Clinton

It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will. If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women's rights - and women's rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely - and the right to be heard.

Cause | Death | Individual | Marriage | Plan | Practice | Right | Rights | Slavery |

Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton

Little by little, in the long run, aspirations can realize themselves. Work for that. We must count it our wealth.

Books | People | World |

Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

In victory even the cowardly like to boast, while in adverse times even the brave are discredited. [In victory the very cowards may brag, defeat discredits even the brave.]

Will |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

Spend some time observing babies. They don't work; they poop in their pants and they have no goals other than to expand, grow and explore this amazing world. Be like that baby you once were, in terms of being joyful.

Time |

Walker Percy

Pascal told only half the story. He said man was a thinking reed. What man is, is a thinking reed and a walking genital.

Character | Civilization | History | Mediocrity | People | Sentiment | Time |

Wallace Stevens

If it were lost in übermenschlichkeit, perhaps our wretched state would soon come right.

Dreams |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

Now tequila may be the favored beverage of outlaws but that doesn't mean it gives them preferential treatment. In fact, tequila probably has betrayed as many outlaws as has the central nervous system and dissatisfied wives. Tequila, scorpion honey, harsh dew of the doglands, essence of Aztec, crema de cacti; tequila, oily and thermal like the sun in solution; tequila, liquid geometry of passion; Tequila, the buzzard god who copulates in midair with the ascending souls of dying virgins; tequila, firebug in the house of good taste; O tequila, savage water of sorcery, what confusion and mischief your sly, rebellious drops do generate!

Age | Body | Children | Resentment | Spirit | Woman |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I think I deserve something beautiful.

Children | Enough | Regret | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I always thought we only had two choices in our lives when it came to pizza crust—thin and crispy, or thick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thin and doughy? Holy of holies! Thin, doughy, strong, gummy, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise.

Absence | Children | Desire | Enough | People | Reason | Regret | Thinking | Witness | Think |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.

Attention | Mind | Writing |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

If the splitter of hairs has a sharp enough knife, the fact of life itself can be chopped into nothing.

Men | Model | Time | Wonder | Understand |

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

Life implies constant activity, and the vital principle was accordingly regarded as something essentially active, constantly controlling and therefore interfering with physical tendencies towards disintegration of organic structure, and building up new organic structure in the process of nutrition and reproduction.

Body | Death | Evidence | Life | Life | Time |