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 Pivert de Senancour

The kind human gain much that that the virtue was less laborious.

Happiness |

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

Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.

Language | Little | Nothing | Sense | Writing |

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 |

Eugenio Montale

Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.

Time | Happiness |

Euripedes NULL

The fountains of sacred rivers flow upwards (i.e., everything is turned topsy turvy.)

Famous | Man | Happiness |

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 |

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 Underhill

The business and method of mysticism is love.

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

Evelyn Underhill

On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.

Contrast | Life | Life | Little | Need | Oratory | Rights | Sense | Wants | Will |

Evelyn Underhill

Adoration is caring for God above all else.

Life | Life | Reality | Sense |

Evelyn Underhill

We have descended into the garden and caught 300 slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and the squalid in gardening. It makes it so lifelike.

Acceptance | Prayer | Sense |

Ezra Taft Benson

The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it.

Belief | Experiment | Family | Freedom | Future | Genius | God | Government | Heaven | History | Inspiration | Knowledge | Land | Man | Men | Mission | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Sense | Government | God |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves.

Sense |

Ezra Taft Benson

Tonight I will speak to you about our beloved republic and the inspired agents whom God raised up to establish the foundation upon which our liberty rests. . . . I speak to you as members of the “household of faith,” the Lord’s true church, and remind you of your solemn charge to uphold, sustain, and defend the kingdom of God. The destiny of America was divinely decreed. The events that established our great nation were foreknown to God and revealed to prophets of old. As in an enacted drama, the players who came on the scene were rehearsed and selected for their parts. Their talent, abilities, capacities, and weaknesses were known before they were born.

Abundance | Authority | Body | Books | Man | Mother | Sense | Tenderness |

Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Historians today are priests of a cult of truth, called to the service of a god whose existence they are doomed to doubt.

Excess | Fear | Individual | Modernity | People | Sense | Society | Terror | World | Society |

Faye Wattleton

In a health-care situation, you see humanity at its most basic, and you realize there are no simple yes-or-no, right-or-wrong answers.

Family | Life | Life | Obligation | Parents | Sense | Value |