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

William Shakespeare

So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. Oh heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year.

Life | Life | Men |

William Shakespeare

Since you know you cannot see yourself so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself that of yourself which yet you know not of.

Blush | Doubt | History | Honor | Innocence | Life | Life | Mother | Past | Tyranny | Will |

William Shakespeare

SIR TOBY BELCH: Dost think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Life | Life | Think |

William Shakespeare

So we'll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too— who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out— and take upon 's the mystery of things, as if we were God's spies.

Life | Life |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I lose count of how many bottles of Sardinian wine we drink before Deborah introduces to the table the suggestion that we follow a nice American custom here tonight by joining hands-and each in turn-saying what we are most grateful for. In three languages, then, this montage of gratitude comes forth, one testimony at a time.

Eternal | Ideas | Life | Life | Tomorrow | World | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

If I – as a beneficiary of that exact formula – will concede that my own life was indeed enriched by that precise familial structure, will the social conservatives please (for once!) concede that this arrangement has always put a disproportionately cumbersome burden on women? Such a system demands that mothers become selfless to the point of near invisibility in order to construct these exemplary environments for their families. And might those same social conservatives – instead of just praising mothers as sacred and noble – be willing to someday join a larger conversation about how we might work together as a society to construct a world where healthy children can be raised and healthy families can prosper without women have to scrape bare the walls of their own souls to do so?

Belief | Destiny | Faith | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | God |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Of course, we all inevitably work too hard, then we get burned out and have to spend the whole weekend in our pajamas, eating cereal straight out of the box and staring at the TV in a mild coma (which is the opposite of working, yes, but not exactly the same thing as pleasure).

Day | Life | Life | World |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

Future | Life | Life | Space | Happiness |

William Shakespeare

So, of his gentleness, Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me from mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

Business | Cause | Day | Death | Duty | Father | God | Greatness | Guilt | Law | Life | Life | Man | Men | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Sin | Soul | Teach | Time | War | Business | God | Guilty | Think |

Elizabeth Gilbert

At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.

Contentment | Life | Life | World |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted—an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore—despite...

Chance | Divinity | Earth | Experience | Life | Life | Pain | Purpose | Purpose | Search | Suffering |

Elizabeth Gilbert

But whenever I see it happen, I always want to say the same thing. Good luck. Because you still have a woman in front of you, my friend. And you are still a man. It’s still two human beings trying to get along, so it’s going to become complicated. And love is always complicated. But still humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

Beauty | Life | Life | Love | Will | Beauty |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I would say that if you really want to STOP knowing someone, you have to divorce him.

Life | Life | Happiness |

Elizabeth Gilbert

If you can plant yourself in stillness long enough, you will, in time, experience the truth that everything (both uncomfortable and lovely) does eventually pass.

Belief | Care | Destiny | Evidence | Faith | God | Life | Life | Light | Meaning | Nature | Play | Prudence | Prudence | God |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this earth to do?

Day | Freedom | Grace | Heart | Intention | Life | Life | Love | Nothing | Past | Relationship | Resolution | Rest | Suffering | Time | Forgive |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Last spring, David had offered this crazy solution to our woes, only half in jest:... What if we admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we can't live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives together- in misery, but happy to not be apart. Let it be a testimony to how desperately I love this guy that I have spent the last ten months giving that offer serious consideration. The other alternative in the backs of our minds, of course, was that one of us might change. He might become more open and affectionate, not withholding himself from anyone who loves him on the fear that she will eat his soul. Or I might learn how to ... stop trying to eat his soul.

Life | Life | Man | Nature | Worry |

Elizabeth Gilbert

A woman's place is in the kitchen...sitting in a comfortable chair, with her feet up, drinking a glass of wine and watching her husband cook dinner.

Important | Life | Life | Soul |

Elizabeth Gilbert

He was playing a character I had invented, which is somewhat telling. In desperate love, it's always like this, isn't it? In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.

Better | Conversation | Life | Life | People |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Guilt's just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear.

Control | Life | Life | Need | Power | Work | Trouble | Learn |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, 'I agree with you.' Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to have peace about religion.

Enthusiasm | Life | Life | Time | Will |