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

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.

Sadness |

Evelyn Underhill

Love... makes the whole difference between an execution and a martyrdom.

Means | Present |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she felt things had been simplified.

Age | Man | Thought | Thought |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

It was dead contrary to the common experience of such encounters, when time is found to have built its own defensive lines, camouflaged vulnerable points, and laid a field of mines across all but a few well-trodden paths, so that, more often than not, we can only signal to one another from either side of the tangle of wire.

Day | Present | Will | Value |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

At the door of the dining-room he left us. 'Good night, Mr Jorkins,' he said. 'I hope you will pay us another visit when you next cross the herring pond.' 'I say, what did your governor mean by that? He seemed almost to think I was American.' 'He's rather odd at times.

Enough | Happy | Ugly | Old |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

She seemed to say "Look at me. I have done my share. I am beautiful. It is something quite out of the ordinary, this beauty of mine. I am made for delight. But what do I get out of it? Where is my reward?" That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, this magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty."

Purpose | Purpose | Sadness | Thought | Thought |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

You spend the first term at Oxford meeting interesting and exciting people and the rest of your time there avoiding them.

Men | Thought | Thought |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to "a semi-official statement"; if they have fallen into conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as "a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable. It is only when the journalist is reporting a whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines it as the opinion of "well-informed circles.

Emotions |

Evelyn Underhill

Most of our conflicts and difficulties come from trying to deal with the spiritual and practical aspects of our life separately instead of realizing them as parts of one whole. If our practical life is centered on our own interests, cluttered up by possessions, distracted by ambitions, passions, wants and worries, beset by a sense of our own rights and importance, or anxieties for our own future, or longings for our own success, we need not expect that our spiritual life will be a contrast to all this. The soul's house is not built on such a convenient plan; there are few soundproof partitions in it. Only when the conviction - not merely the idea - that the demand of the Spirit, however inconvenient, rules the whole of it, will those objectionable noises die down which have a way of penetrating into the nicely furnished little oratory and drowning all the quieter voices by their din.

Courage | Life | Life | People | Plan | Think |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.

Fear | Strength | Will |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Old boy, said Grimes, you're in love. Nonsense! Smitten? said Grimes. No, no. The tender passion? No. Cupid's jolly little darts? No. Spring fancies, love's young dream? Nonsense! Not even a quickening of the pulse? No. A sweet despair? Certainly not. A trembling hope? No. A frisson? a Je ne sais quoi? Nothing of the sort. Liar! said Grimes.

Journey | Mind |

Eustace Budgell

The fair sex are so conscious to themselves that they have nothing in them which can deserve entirely to engross the whole man, that they heartily despise one who, to use their own expression, is always hanging at their apron-strings.

Friend | Man |

Evelyn Underhill

Those who complain that they make no progress in the life of prayer because they cannot meditate should examine, not their capacity for meditation, but their capacity for suffering and love. For there is a hard and costly element, a deep seriousness, a crucial choice, in all genuine religion.

Dependence | God | Language | Life | Life | Little | Religion | Universe | God |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

From the earliest times the Welsh have been looked upon as an unclean people. It is thus that they have preserved their racial integrity. Their sons and daughters rarely mate with humankind except their own blood relations.

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Oh, why did nobody warn me? cried Grimes in agony. I should have been told. They should have told me in so many words. They should have warned me about Flossie, not about the fires of hell. I've risked them, and I don't mind risking them again, but they should have told me about marriage. They should have told me that at the end of that gay journey and flower-strewn path were the hideous lights of home and the voices of children.

Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie

There's still a lot I need to do as a player, as a musician, as a sound creator. I have commissioned 170 pieces: that's still not enough, there are still lots and lots of composers I would like to approach. When I see a composer and I see a performer, I think to combine those forces.

Evan Esar

Some go on a diet while most are merely wishful shrinkers.

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Instead of this absurd division into sexes they ought to class people as static and dynamic.

Speech | World | Think |