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

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.

Hans Küng

A human person is infinitely precious and must be unconditionally protected.

Italian Proverbs

Revenge a hundred years old has still its milk-teeth.

Politics | Vision | Will |

Italian Proverbs

Summer is the mother of the poor.

Democracy | Good | Means | Vision |

Italian Proverbs

One devil knows another.

Truth | Vision |

Italian Proverbs

The same fire purifies gold and consumes straw.

Vision | Work |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilizations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.

Age | Boys | Magic | Time | Vision |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Dead men are not friends to living men, and give them no gifts.

Better | Cause | Peril | Time | Will |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Death never comes at the right time, despite what mortals believe. Death always comes like a thief.

Nations | Object | Race | Spirit | Time |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Deserves it I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Anti-semitism | Cause | Object | Race |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow in the waters that was soon lost in the West. There he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-Earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart.

Technology | Vision | Will |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

I should think so-in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Makes you late for dinner! I can't see what anybody sees in it.

Capacity | Vision |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

In account after account of exorcisms the demonic voices will propound nihilism of one variety or another.

Will | Friends |