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

Gustave Flaubert

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.

Men |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

A woman, if she hates her husband (and many of them do), can make life so sour and obnoxious to him that even death upon the gallows seems sweet by comparison. This hatred, of course, is often, and perhaps almost invariably, quite justified. To be the wife of an ordinary man, indeed, is an experience that must be very hard to bear. The hollowness and vanity of the fellow, his petty meanness and stupidity, his puling sentimentality and credulity, his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill, his anaesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit, above all, his loathsome clumsiness in amour?all these things must revolt any woman above the lowest.

Men |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

No married man is genuinely happy if he has to drink worse whisky than he used to drink when he was single.

Men | Wise |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Lawyer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.

Men |

Hans Reichenbach

The famous assertion by Einstein that the length of a rod depends on its velocity and on the chosen definition of simultaneity. ...is based on the fact that we do not measure the length of the rod, but its projection on a system at rest. How the length of the projection depends on the choice of simultaneity can be illustrated by reference to a photograph taken through a focal-plane shutter. Such a shutter... consists of a wide band with a horizontal slit, which slides down vertically. Different bands are photographed successively on the film. Moving objects are therefore strangely distorted; the wheels of a rapidly moving car for instance, appear to be slanted. The shape of the objects in the picture will evidently depend on the speed of the shutter. Similarly, the length of the moving segment depends on the definition of simultaneity. One definition of simultaneity differs from another because events that are simultaneous for one definition occur successively for another. What may be a simultaneity projection of a moving segment for one definition is a "focal-plane shutter photograph" for another.

Men |

Italian Proverbs

One who wants to keep their yard tidy does not reserve a plot for the weeds.

Change | Civilization | Future | Global | Health | Inconvenient | Land | Security | Will |

Italian Proverbs

Poor men's money and cowards' weapons are often flourished.

Self |

Italian Proverbs

Of this world each man has as much as he takes.

Life | Life | Men |

Italian Proverbs

Step by step one goes to Rome.

History |

Italian Proverbs

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

Consideration | Man | Nothing |

Italian Proverbs

No news is good news.

Innovation |

Italian Proverbs

Of the wealth of the world each has as much as they take.

Affliction | Gloom | Light |

Italian Proverbs

Sometimes it is better to give your apple away, than to eat it yourself.

Absolute | Belief |

Italian Proverbs

Softly, barber, the water scalds.

Balance | Rights | System | Wise |

Italian Proverbs

She who is born a beauty is born betrothed.

Italian Proverbs

No sooner is the law made than its evasion is discovered.

Evil | Men |

Italian Proverbs

One today is worth two tomorrows.

Society | Success | Society |

Italian Proverbs

Sons may look and behave like their fathers. This is due to inheritance and the example observed closely and daily.

Belief | Truth |

Italian Proverbs

The devil is bad because he is old.

Ability | Age | Art | Control | Culture | Humor | Memory | Need | Time | Work | World | Art |