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

Elif Safak

No reason to feel depressed about being depressed. A depression can be a golden opportunity to collect the pieces and build ourselves anew. Global Souls are always on the move, nomads at heart, connected to various cities, commuters between cultures, both from here and everywhere.

Little | Sense | World | Afraid |

Elihu Root

Honest people, mistakenly believing in the justice of their cause, are led to support injustice.

Conduct | Judgment | Men | World |

Elihu Root

The old system of exploitation of colonies and the monopolization of their trade for the benefit of the mother country has practically disappeared.

Action | Argument | Conduct | Doctrine | Peace | Propaganda |

Elihu Root

The popular tendency is to listen approvingly to the most extreme statements and claims of politicians and orators who seek popularity by declaring their own country right in everything and other countries wrong in everything.

Human nature | Nature | Peace | War |

Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen

But when she looked for Gerald there seemed too much of him. He was a wood in which she counted from tree to tree – all hers – and knew the boundary wall right round. But how to measure this unaccountable darkness between the trees, this living silence? So she turned back to Mr. Montmorency, adding a paragraph.

World |

Albert Einstein

What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of "humility." This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

Awe | Important | Morality | People | Will |

Elif Safak

Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don’t let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. Good to remember…

Childhood |

Elif Safak

Sam know why - I said with a smile. - Spiritual development covers our entire consciousness and not its individual countries. Rule number thirty-two: Between you and God should not stand anything. Neither the imams or priests or rabbis or other guardians of morality or religious leadership. Neither spiritual teachers, or even faith. Believe in its values ​​and rules, but not impose them on others never. If you repeatedly break the hearts of the people, whatever religious duty to perform, it is useless. Beware of any idolatry idols because clouding your vision. Let us be your guide and only God. Learn the truth, my friend, but be careful not to become a fetish truths.

Life | Life | Love | Soul | World |

Albert Einstein

However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research.

Science | Spirit | Universe |

Albert Einstein

My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance-but for us, not for God.

Admiration | God | Science | World | God |

William Shakespeare

Since I was man, such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never remember to have heard. Man's nature cannot carry th' affliction nor the fear.

Man | Nothing | Purpose | Purpose | Will | World | Think |

William Shakespeare

Soft pity enters an iron gate.

Comfort |

William Shakespeare

Rudeness is a sauce to his good wit, which gives men stomach to digest his words, with better appetite.

Action | Cause | Grace | Little | World | Blessed |

William Shakespeare

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

Boys | Day | Glory | Good | Greatness | Hate | Heart | Hope | Little | Man | Mercy | Pride | Smile | Old |

William Shakespeare

So many horrid Ghosts.

Man |

William Shakespeare

So will I turn her virtue into pitch, and out of her own goodness make the net that shall enmesh them all.

Tears | World | Blessed |

William Shakespeare

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. Twelfth Night, or, What You Will (Malvalio at II, v)

World | Think |

William Shakespeare

SALERIO: Why, I am sure if he forfeit thou wilt not take his flesh. What's that good for? SHYLOCK: To bait fish withal—if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.

Death | Lying | Woman | Gossip |

William Shakespeare

Save in the office and affairs of love.

Good | Man |

William Shakespeare

So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown When judges have been babes; great floods have flown From simple sources, and great seas have dried When miracles have by the greatest been denied. All's Well That Ends Well (Helena at II, i)

Man | Poverty | Think |