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

William Godwin

There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness.

Reverence |

William Law

He that is endeavoring to subdue, and root out of his mind, all those passions of pride, envy and ambition, which religion opposes, is doing more to make himself happy, even in this life than he that is contriving means to indulge them.

Angels | Reverence | Worship |

Elihu Root

It is to be observed that every case of war averted is a gain in general, for it helps to form a habit of peace, and community habits long continued become standards of conduct.

Enthusiasm | People | Resentment |

Elias Canetti

Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.

Enthusiasm | Good | Indignation |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, 'I agree with you.' Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to have peace about religion.

Enthusiasm | Life | Life | Time | Will |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Some days are meant to be counted, others are meant to be weighed.

Church | History | Marriage | Respect | Reverence | Sacred | Talking | Tradition | Respect |

Elizabeth Lesser

I recently heard a great writer say that an essential element in the life of a writer is to have been an outsider in childhood, to have been given the gift of not belonging.

Earth | Good | Heart | Reverence | Talking | Woman | Old |

Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.

Enthusiasm | Inspiration | People | Work | Leadership |

Ezekial Hopkins

Unless the being of a God be presupposed, no tolerable account can be given of the being of any thing.

Glory | Respect | Reverence | Respect |

Eudora Welty

The very greatest mystery is in unsheathed reality itself.

Life | Life | Reverence |

Eugene Peterson

This devalues the experience of suffering.

Enthusiasm | Experience | Inclination | Little |

Ezra Taft Benson

I speak of honor-your honor to God-your honor to country-your honor to self. I sincerely believe it to be the cure to most of our ills, both on a national or individual basis.

Choice | God | Heaven | Reverence | Sacred | Words | Approval | God |

Felix Adler

An ideal is a port toward which we resolve to steer. We may not reach it. The mere fact that our goal is definitely located does not suffice to conduct us thither. But surely we shall thus stand a better chance of making port in the end than if we drift about aimlessly, the sport of winds and tides, without having decided in our own minds in what direction we ought to bend our course. The moral law is the expression of our inmost nature, and when we live in consonance with it we feel that we are living out our true being.

Age | Childhood | Father | Mother | Respect | Reverence | Respect |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air?that progress made under the shadow of the policeman?s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave? In any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct to side with the citizen? I am against all efforts to make men virtuous by law.

Creativity | Energy | Enthusiasm | Freedom | Good | People |