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

Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

The art of being yourself at your best is the art of unfolding your personality into the person you want to be...Be gentle with yourself, learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself, for only as we have the right attitude toward ourselves can we have the right attitude toward others.

Story |

Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.

Enough | Story | Will |

Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

Yet, so strong is the hold which the insidious evil of Communism secures upon its disciples, that I could still say to someone at that time: I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism.

Daughter | Experience | Father | Logic | Myth | Question | Reason | Soul | Vision | Will | Child |

Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

I am in no sense of the word a great artist, not even a great animator; I have always had men working for me whose skills were greater than my own. I am an idea man.

Enough | Life | Life | Tears | Television |

Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil, and that is what our pictures attempt to do.

Sense | Think |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.

Fighting | Little |

Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

When we consider a project, we really study it — not just the surface idea, but everything about it. And when we go into that new project, we believe in it all the way. We have confidence in our ability to do it right. And we work hard to do the best possible job.

People |

Wang Wei, aka Wang Youcheng

Sitting alone in the hush of the bamboo grove I thrum my lute and whistle lingering notes. In the secrecy of the wood no one can hear -- Only the clear moon comes to shine on me.

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

It is impossible to spoil a child under the age of eighteen months with too much love and attention.

Anger | Laughter |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

Children | Laughter | People | Child |

Welsh Proverbs

There are many kinds of folly.

Old |

Wallace Stevens

My father's father, his father's father, his— shadows like winds go back to a parent before thought, before speech, at the head of the past.

Laughter | Rhetoric |

Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson

The greater cats with golden eyes stare out between the bars. Deserts are there, and the different skies, and night with different stars. They prowl the aromatic hill, and mate as fiercely as they kill, to roam, to live, to drink their fill; but this beyond their wit know I:

Joy |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

A little downy girl still wearing poppies still eating popcorn in the colored gloam where tawny Indians took paid croppers because you stole her from her wax-browed and dignified protector spitting into his heavy-lidded eye ripping his flavid toga and at dawn leaving the hog to roll upon his new discomfort the awfulness of love and violets remorse despair while you took a dull doll to pieces and threw its head away because of all you did because of all I did not you have to die

Art | Capacity | Good | Guests | Husband | Impression | Men | People | Quiet | Smile | Space | Woman | Art |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as? I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.

Good | Science | Suspense | Think |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Death | Delusion | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Love | Reason | Think |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Under no circumstances would he [Humbert Humbert] have interfered with the innocence of a child, if there was the least risk of a row.

Children | Man |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

Our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by.

Change | Looks | People | World |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

They lack suggestive power. And when a book lacks suggestive power, however hard it hits the surface of the mind it cannot penetrate within.

People |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

That people should love like this, that Mr. Bankes should feel this for Mrs. Ramsay (she glanced at him musing) was helpful, was exalting.

Change | Looks | People | Will | World |