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

Hannah Arendt

To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious.

Good | Man | Wife |

Hans Zinnser

We have chosen to write the biography of our disease because we love it platonically ? as Amy Lowell loved Keats ? and have sought its acquaintance wherever we could find it. And in this growing intimacy we have become increasingly impressed with the influence that this and other infectious diseases, which span ? in their protoplasmic continuities ? the entire history of mankind, have had upon the fates of men.

Devil | Man |

Hans Hoffman

Art is to me the glorification of the human spirit, and as such it is the cultural documentation of the time in which it is produced.

Honor |

Hans Reichenbach

We are frequently faced with the necessity of looking for the picture required for the visualization of an object, not in the perception of this particular object, but in a different perceptual image... we can assert the discrepancy between the perceived picture and the objective state. This discrepancy... proves absolutely nothing against the fact that all visualizations are merely sense qualities of the perceptual space... If the parallelism is... to be visualized, we must supplement our assertion by the description of certain qualities with which we are familiar from perceptual space.

Little | Man |

Italian Proverbs

Of what does not concern you say nothing, good or bad.

Consideration | Man | Nothing |

Italian Proverbs

Of judgment everyone has a stock on hand for sale.

Adversity |

Italian Proverbs

Substance is not enough, accident is also required.

Ability | Coercion | Power |

Italian Proverbs

One must have been controlled in the same situation one wishes to properly control others.

Change | People | World | Think |

Italian Proverbs

On a long journey even a straw is heavy.

Enough | Good | Man |

Italian Proverbs

One may have good eyes and yet see nothing.

Action | Man | Prejudice | Reason |

Italian Proverbs

Never speak of a rope in the house of one who was hanged.

Man |

Italian Proverbs

So good that he is good for nothing.

Effort | Good | Internet | People | Power | Promise | Time |

Italian Proverbs

The liar is not believed when he speaks the truth.

Man |

Italian Proverbs

The world wags on with three things: doing, undoing, and pretending.

Ability | Adventure | Character | Comfort | Convictions | Daring | Ideas | Injustice | Injustice | Love | Man | Men | Qualities | Sound | Suffering | Talking | Time | Universe | Will | Witness | Blessed | Old | Winning |

Italian Proverbs

Where there is great love there is great pain.

Good | People | Right |

Italian Proverbs

When rogues go in procession the devil carries the cross.

Important | Self-knowledge | Truths |

Italian Proverbs

Water after does not quench a fire at hand.

Time | Unity | Think |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

In the development and the maintenance of a living organism the coordination is very clear. The development of each part can be shown to be dependent on that of other parts, including the immediate environment; and the more closely development and maintenance are studied the more evident does this become. But the particular manner in which the parts and the environment influence one another is such that the specific structure and activities of the organism are maintained. They are unmistakably developed and maintained as a whole, and this is what we mean when we say that the organism lives a specific life. The conception of its life enables us to predict the general behavior of its parts so long as it is alive, and in particular it enables us to predict the general manner of its reproduction from a rudimentary part of the same organism? it is this co-ordinated maintenance that we call life.

Life | Life | Man |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.

Man |