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

Eugene Peterson

You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.

Guidance | Habit | Need | Time | Understanding | Wisdom | Guidance |

Eugene Peterson

Instead of asking, “Why does this happen Why do I feel left in the lurch” we can ask “How does it happen that there are people who sing with such confidence, ‘God’s strong name is our help’”

Competence | God | Growth | Habit | Knowing | Knowledge | Love | People | Understanding | God |

Eugene Peterson

We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God sticks with us.

Birth | Death | Understanding | Will |

Eugenio Montale

Scotellaro could leave us a hundred poems that remain some of the most significant of our time ... in him the dough between the vein and the vein that I would say international folk have found happiness unusual accent.

Understanding |

Faye Wattleton

I think it's unfortunate and really reflects the mean-spirited nature of the anti-abortion movement that it is willing to sacrifice poor women in this debate as a means of making gains. Abortion is legal in this country and is not something that should be denied women, but anti-abortion advocates suggest that if they can't deny it to every woman, they will at least deny it to low-income women.

Commitment | Determination | Important | Respect | Understanding | Respect |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.

Good | Impression | Literature | Man | Quiet | Understanding | Child |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

I have never made a threat. I've never made a threat, never expressed a threat, never - I've never - I would never threaten violence ever, because I am a man of peace, dedicated to peace.

Appreciation | Cooperation | Dedication | History | Reflection | Success | Understanding | Appreciation | Friends |

Ezra Taft Benson

May we be worthy of the freedoms that have been provided us in our Constitution, and equal to the trials and tests that shall surely come. We truly have special and individual responsibilities to befriend and to defend that “glorious standard,” our Constitution.

God | Need | Principles | Reading | Understanding | Will | Wise | Words | God | Understand |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

'Jihad' can mean holy war to extremists, but it means struggle to the average Muslim.

Desire | History | People | Understanding | Friends |

Ezra Taft Benson

One good yardstick as to whether a person might be the right one for you is this: in her presence, do you think your noblest thoughts, do you aspire to your finest deeds, do you wish you were better than you are?

Appearance | Change | Character | Day | Disgrace | Heart | Important | Injustice | Injustice | Joy | Lesson | Pain | Parents | Peace | Play | Resolution | Understanding | Circumstance | Teacher |

Felix Adler

The platform of an Ethical Society is itself the altar; the address must be the fire that burns thereon.

Contrast | Life | Life | Love | Mortal | Pain | Peace | Sense | Thought | Time | Understanding | Thought |

Felix Adler

We call him a hero who maintains himself, single-handed, against superior numbers. We call him a master-horseman who sits a fiery and vicious steed, guiding him at will. And in like manner, we call him a moral hero who conquers the enemies within his own breast — and we admire and revere the soul which can ride its own passions and force them into obedience to the dictates of reason.

Art | Better | Character | Estimation | Insight | Need | Science | Understanding | Art |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments, insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often highly dubious.

Pleasure | Understanding |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

No government, of its own motion, will increase its own weakness, for that would mean to acquiesce in its own destruction... governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. It?s one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.

Evil | Man | Pleasure | Understanding |

Italian Proverbs

Penny and penny laid up will be many.

Diversity | People | Understanding | Understand |

Italian Proverbs

Two women and a goose make a market.

Doubt | Irony | Life | Life | Means | Need | Plenty | Self | Superiority | Understanding | Work | World | Afraid |

Italian Proverbs

What is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh.

Hope | People | Understanding |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief, that can rise to delight, that, thank Heaven, nobody is reporting in this fashion on us.

Ambiguity | Better | Compassion | Enemy | Failure | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Little | Means | People | Religion | Sense | Tradition | Understanding | Work | Failure |