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

Evelyn Underhill

And so we take a holiday, a vacation, to gain release from this bondage for a space, to stand back from the rush of things and breathe again. But a holiday is a respite, not a cure. The more we need holidays, the more certain it is that the disease has conquered us and not we it. More and more holidays just to get away from it all is a sure sign of a decaying civilization; it was one of the most obvious marks of the breakdown of the Roman empire. It is a symptom that we haven't learned how to live so as to re-create ourselves in our work instead of being sapped by it. A car should always be charging its battery as it runs. If it simply uses up without putting back, it has to go into dock to be recharged. It is not a sign that we are running particularly well if we are constantly needing to go into dock.

Evil | Extreme | Love | Object | Time | Truth | Vision | World |

Evelyn Underhill

Living in the present means squarely accepting and responding to it as God's moment for you now while it is called "today" rather than wishing it were yesterday or tomorrow.

Absolute | Beginning | Language | Love | Mysticism | Philosophy | Truth |

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 Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

I will not stand for being called a woman in my own house.

Cause | Death | Life | Life | Man | People | Public |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.

Absurd | People |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?

Chance | Family | Impulse | Nature | People |

Evelyn Underhill

If you have made a decision, and you still feel, taking it all in all, it was the right one, then don't look over your shoulder on what might have been. If it was wrong, ask for forgiveness and accept the present consequences, happily and without remorse. Nothing is more corrosive of the powers you should be using to meet the present.

Charity | Cost | Little | Love | Piety | World | Talent |

Evelyn Underhill

This wide and generous spirit of love, not the religious egotist's longing to get away from the world to God, is the fruit of true self-oblation; for a soul totally possessed by God is a soul totally possessed by Charity. By the path of self-offering, the Church and the soul have come up to the frontiers of the Holy. There we are required, not to cast the world from us, but to do our best for all others as well as ourselves.

Love | Power | Time |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

All day the head had been barely supportable but at evening a breeze arose in the West, blowing from the heart of the setting sun and from the ocean, which lay unseen, unheard behind the scrubby foothills. It shook the rusty fringes of palm-leaf and swelled the dry sounds of summer, the frog-voices, the grating cicadas, and the ever present pulse of music from the neighboring native huts.

Love | Trust |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

People | Prison | Public | Will |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

'But what am I to teach them?' said Paul in sudden panic. 'Oh, I shouldn't try to teach them anything, not just yet, anyway. Just keep them quiet.'

People |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Just the place to bury a crock of gold,' said Sebastian. 'I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.

Hate | Heaven | Love | Old |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into the depths of confusion you didn't know existed.

Curiosity | Heart | Love | Search |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Don't give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can't express them. Don't analyze yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.

Family | Good | Love | Mind | Mourning |

Evelyn Underhill

When you let intuition have its way with you, you open up new levels of the world. Such opening-up is the most practical of all activities.

Charity | Desire | Events | God | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Reality | God |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Downstairs Peter Beste-Chetwynde mixed himself another brandy and soda and turned a page in Havelock Ellis, which, next to The Wind in the Willows, was his favourite book.

Church | Faith | Father | Hunger | People | Religion | Right | Words | Worth | Think |

Ezra Taft Benson

And so this great nation has come into being under the inspiration of the Almighty to accomplish his purposes. Through modern revelation we have had made very plain to us something of the mission of America and the establishment of our national Constitution.

Blessings | Free enterprise | Men | Mind | People | Right | System | Time |

Evan Esar

The trouble with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of parenthood.

People | World |