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

Dorothy Parker

Emily Post's Etiquette is out again, this time in a new and an enlarged edition, and so the question of what to do with my evenings has been all fixed up for me.

Change | Story |

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Black sin is oft white truth that missed its way.

Change | Will |

Ellen Goodman

I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.

Change | People | Struggle |

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

And thus it ever is: so long as woman labors to second man's endeavors and exalt his sex above her own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when she dares to demand rights and privileges for herself, her motives, manners, dress, personal appearance, a

Change |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.

Change | Will |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

They say that God lives very high! But if you look above the pines You cannot see our God. And why? And if you dig down in the mines You never see Him in the gold, Though from Him all that's glory shines. God is so good, He wears a fold Of heaven and earth across His face - Like secrets kept, for love, untold. But still I feel that His embrace Slides down by thrills, through all things made, Through sight and sound of every place: As if my tender brother laid On my shut lids, her kisses' pressure, Half waking me at night; and said, Who kissed through the dark, dear guesser?

Change | Crime |

Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible?

Change | People | Will |

Dorothy Parker

I cannot be just for books that deal with the woman as woman ... My idea is that everyone, both men and women, we sayons, we must be regarded as human beings.

Change | Words |

Emil M. Cioran

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

Belief |

Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

In the common sense of the word, Judaism is not a religion, it is not a system of dogmas, of sacramental grace; it is not a bundle of rites and ceremonies; it is not a road to happiness in the hereafter; it is not a scheme of salvation from original sin; it does neither stand nor fall with our views as to the character of those books we call sacred, and as to their authorship. But it is a message to the world that righteousness must be its own reward, and is of that force which builds the world and shapes the courses of men.

Agnostic | Belief | Charity | God | Man | Mercy | Need | Pity | Thinkers | God | Agnostic |

Dorothy Parker

Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.

Change | Influence | Safe |

Emile Zola

We are told of the honor of the army; we are supposed to love and respect it. Ah, yes, of course, an army that would rise to the first threat, that would defend French soil, that army is the nation itself, and for that army we have nothing but devotion and respect. But this is not about that army, whose dignity we are seeking, in our cry for justice. What is at stake is the sword, the master that will one day, perhaps, be forced upon us. Bow and scrape before that sword, that god? No!

Change | World |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

Today I will not seek the shadowy region; its unsustaining vastness waxes drear; and visions rising, legion after legion, bring the unreal world too strangely near.

Change | Eternal | Little | Love | Mind | Pleasure | Will |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return - the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame - shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.

Art | Change | Danger | Darkness | Doubt | Dreams | Grief | Guile | Hate | Heart | Hope | Liberty | Life | Life | Pain | Quiet | Reason | Suffering | Suspicion | Thankfulness | Trust | Truth | World | Danger | Art |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

He had been content with daily labor and rough animal enjoyments, 'till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompts to higher pursuits; and, instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavors to raise himself had produced just the contrary result.

Change | Heaven | Kill |

Emma Goldman

But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it endure under Anarchism? Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities. Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations. This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women the world over; a conclusion resulting from the close and studious observation of the tendencies of modern society: individual liberty and economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in man.

Atheism | Belief | Earth | Fighting | God | Individual | Influence | Man | Power | Rule | Servitude | Thought | God | Thought |

Emma Goldman

Served as inspiration for Roger Baldwin, a future founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Change | Improvement | Life | Life | Price | Revolution | Struggle | Worth | Loss |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

And from the midst of cheerless gloom I passed to bright unclouded day.

Change | Courage | Day | Dignity | Father | Good | Heart | Little | Mother | Will | Friends | Learn | Think |

Emma Goldman

Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass.

Belief | Daring | Fear | Fidelity | Honesty | Life | Life | Morality |

Emma Goldman

No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved. Revolution is the negation of the existing, a violent protest against man's inhumanity to man with all the thousand and one slaveries it involves. It is the destroyer of dominant values upon which a complex system of injustice, oppression, and wrong has been built up by ignorance and brutality. It is the herald of NEW VALUES, ushering in a transformation of the basic relations of man to man, and of man to society.

Change | Effort | Revolution | Thought | Thought |