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

Eugenio Montale

The inspiration often seems like a tarantula bite him, shake him from sleep atavistic and in those moments it is impossible to write better than him, with far more cunning, with the most perfect taste.

Art | Consciousness | Instinct | Music | Practice | Style | Time | Art | Poem |

Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie

My hearing is out of the ordinary as others might see it, but not for me. I'm used to my hearing in the same way that I'm used to the size of my hands.

Music | Practice |

Evelyn Underhill

Many people seem to think that the spiritual life necessarily requires a definite and exacting plan of study. It does not. But it does require a definite plan of life; and courage in sticking to the plan, not for merely days or weeks, but for years.

Angels | Beauty | Church | Ends | Little | Universe | Worship | Beauty |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.

Day | Heart | Music | Present |

Ezra Taft Benson

If a man does not control his temper, it is a sad admission that he is not in control of his thoughts. He then becomes a victim of his own passions and emotions, which lead him to actions that are totally unfit for civilized behavior, let alone behavior for a priesthood holder.

Family | Freedom | God | Government | Guidance | Heaven | History | Individual | Inspiration | Land | Liberty | Man | Men | Mission | Morality | Need | Providence | Religion | Right | Sacred | World | Worship | Government | Guidance | God | Child |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Music |

Ezra Taft Benson

Prayer in the hour of need is a great boon. From simple trials to our Gethsemanes, prayer can put us in touch with God, our greatest source of comfort and counsel.

Belief | Dignity | Eternal | Fear | Free speech | God | Government | Life | Life | Right | Rights | Speech | Work | World | Worship | Government | Trial | God |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point.

Church | Music |

Felix Adler

The fact that there is a spiritual power in us, that is to say, a power which testifies to the unity of our life with the life of others, which impels us to regard others as other selves — this fact conies home to us even more forcibly in sorrow than in joy. It is thrown into clearest relief on the background of pain. In the glow of achievement we are apt to be full of a false self-importance. But in moments of weakness we realize, through contrast, the infinitely superior strength of the power whose very humble organs and ministers we are. It is then we come to understand that, isolated from it, we are nothing; at one with it, identified with it, we participate in its eternal nature, in its resistless course.

Heart | Music | Rest |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

Day | Good | Music | Poetry |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.

Art | Music | Art |

Gustave Flaubert

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.

Listening | Music | People | Think |