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

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

To include the strength of marriage in that of love, c ' is going up 'to ignore the spirit of this institution.

Duty | Mind | Sense | Terror |

Eudora Welty

Writing is an expression of the writer's own peculiar personality, could not help being so. Yet in reading great works one feels that the finished piece transcends the personal. All writers great and small must sometimes have felt that they have become part of what they wrote even more than it still remains a part of them.

Respect | Sense | Respect |

Eugen Herrigel

You have described only too well, replied the Master, where the difficulty lies...The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You...brace yourself for failure. So long as that is so, you have no choice but to call forth something yourself that ought to happen independently of you, and so long as you call it forth your hand will not open in the right way--like the hand of a child.

Danger | Life | Life | Man | Soul | Time | Danger |

Eugene Peterson

God is at the foundation and God is at the boundaries.

Infancy | Will |

Eugene Peterson

The danger that is a threat to obedience is that we should reduce Christian existence to ritually obeying a few commandments that are congenial to our temperament and convenient to our standard of living.

Bible | Good | Past | Bible | Old |

Eugene Peterson

The mistake we so often make is thinking that GodÂ’s interest and care for us waxes and wanes according to our spiritual temperature.

God | Lord | Sense | Words | God |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room - and God damn it - died in a hotel room.

Means | Mind | Psychology | Will |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

In forming a habit of communicating to one another this fort of ideas by actions, mankind accustomed themselves to determine them; and from that time they began to find a greater ease in connecting them with other signs.

Perception | Regard | Respect | Taste | Will | Respect |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

I can do what I want, but the trouble is that I do not quite know what to do.

Enjoyment | Love | Man | Pain | Pleasure | Sense |

Eugene Peterson

Have no fear about doing so, for we have a “warts-and-all” religion.

Cause | Children | Family | God | Grace | Mind | God | Learn |

Eugene Peterson

I wish him well. Now he can continue to pursue his dream of excellence in education.

Life | Life | Will |

Eugene Peterson

The Bible is not a script for a funeral service, but it is the record of God always bringing life where we expected to find death. Everywhere it is the story of resurrection.

People | Present |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

For de small stealing dey puts you in jail, soon or late. But for de big stealing dey puts yo' picture in de paper and yo' statue in de Hall of Fame when you croaks! If dey's one thing I learned in ten years, listenin' to de white quality on de Pullman cars, it's dat same fact. And when I gets a chance to use it -- from stowaway to Emperor in two years. Dat's goin' some!

Life | Life | Past | Peace | Unity |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

TYRONE: [Stares at him -- impressed.] Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. [Then protesting uneasily] But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND: [Sardonically] The makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.

Future | Past |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

Not merely to learn philosophy, but to become a philosopher, this is what is now at stake. It does not involve giving up philosophy as a science; it rather involves aiming at possessing philosophy in a different and more exalted way as included in wisdom itself, to which it is in the same relation as a body to its soul. Then also does the philosophical life truly begin, and its beginning does not consist in any addition to already acquired learning; it rather looks like falling in love, like answering the call of a vocation, or undergoing the transforming experience of a conversion.

Life | Life | Man |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

Our wants are all dependent upon one another, and the perceptions of them might be considered as a series of fundamental ideas, to which we. might reduce all those which make a part of our knowledge.

Imagination | Music |

Eugen Herrigel

This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose.

Aims | Art | Awareness | Experience | Individual | Meaning | Means | Mind | Nothing | Power | Practice | Present | Reflection | Spirit | Work | Art | Awareness |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

It's a great game - the pursuit of happiness.

Will |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

It wasn't the fog I minded, Cathleen. I really love fog. It hides you from the world and the world from you. You feel that everything has changed, and nothing is what it seemed to be. No one can find or touch you anymore. ItÂ’s the foghorn I hate. It won't let you alone. It keeps reminding you, and warning you, and calling you back.

Little | Love | Will |