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

Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centered at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom.

Heaven | Means | Universe |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

All official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery.

Attention | Search |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists.

Attention | Events | Power | Proletariat | Right | Will | World | Following | Crisis |

Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

I have therefore thought that it would be a worthy and very useful thing to reduce the whole of this great art to a complete and orderly form of presentation, and then in different books to lay down and explain the required characteristics of different departments.

Better | Means | Purity | Taste |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

As to the past, I would not mind retrieving from various corners of space-time certain lost comforts, such as baggy trousers and long, deep bathtubs.

Attention | Fear | Imagination | Insanity | Land | Life | Life | Object | Time |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Math anxiety: an intense lifelong fear of two trains approaching each other at speeds of 60 and 80 MPH.

Books | Conspiracy | Literature | Nonsense | Nothing | Reading | Suspicion | Taste |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper. All rose, exchanging smiles.

Consciousness | Poetry | Position | Regard | Universe |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.

Attention | Memory |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books

Taste |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

I confess that when I consider this globe, or rather this globule, I think that God has abandoned it to some evil creature.

Universe |

Vimala Thakar

We become aware of all that is happening within us, of the different emotions arising within us, for example if we begin to get angry we are aware of it and so the grip of anger loosens its hold over us.

Beauty | Darkness | Intelligence | Life | Life | Nothing | Peace | People | Rest | Suffering | Universe | Wonder | World | Beauty |

Vimala Thakar

It is not sufficient that a few in society penetrate to the depths of living and offer fascinating accounts about the oneness of all beings. What is necessary in these critical times is that all sensitive and caring people make a personal discovery of the fact of oneness and allow compassion to flow in their lives. When compassion and realization of oneness becomes the dynamic of human relationship, then humankind will evolve.

Attention | Care | Children | Freedom | Greed | Harmony | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Mistrust | Need | Peace | Responsibility | Study | Thought | Will | Thought |

Vimala Thakar

The world today forces us to accept, at least intellectually, our oneness, our interrelatedness. And more and more people are awakening to the urgency of arresting the accelerating madness around us. As yet, however, our ways of responding are superficial, unequal to the complexities of the challenge. We do not take or even consider actions that threaten our security or alter our habitual ways of drifting through life. If we continue to live carelessly, indifferently, emphasizing private gain and personal indulgence, we are essentially opting for the suicide of humanity.

Beauty | Intelligence | Life | Life | Nothing | Rest | Universe | Wonder | Beauty |

Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.

Attention | Enough | Little | Present | Will |

Vimala Thakar

Meditation is meeting eternity in the present moment. It is resolving every problem as it comes. It is resolving every tension as it creeps in. It is facing the challenges of life in a non-fearful way.

Attention | Awareness | Freedom | Meditation | Nature | Will | Awareness | Victim |

Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Good | Imagination | Knowledge | Taste |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

A strange thing has happened -- while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time.

Beginning | Example | Failure | Heart | Light | Little | Nothing | Pain | Sense | Taste | Time | Waste | Will | Wonder | Failure |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

In the 18th century we knew how everything was done, but here I rise through the air, I listen to voices in America, I see men flying- but how is it done? I can't even begin to wonder. So my belief in magic returns.

Attention | Solitude |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

He was not afraid. At every moment Nature signified by some laughing hint like that gold spot which went round the wall--there, there, there--her determination to show, by brandishing her plumes, shaking her tresses, flinging her mantle this way and that, beautifully, always beautifully, and standing close up to breathe through her hollowed hands Shakespeare's words, her meaning.

Attention | Kill | Little | Love | Men | Work |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight.

Power | Universe |