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

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

But land is land, and it's safer than the stocks and bonds of Wall Street swindlers.

Life | Life | Self |

Eudora Welty

I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.

Books | Taste |

Eudora Welty

Then the light changed the water, until all about them the woods in the rising wind seemed to grow taller and blow inward together and suddenly turn dark. The rain struck heavily. A huge tail seemed to lash through the air and the river broke in a wound of silver.

Life | Life | Work | Writing |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

A man's work is in danger of deteriorating when he thinks he has found the one best formula for doing it. If he thinks that, he is likely to feel that all he needs is merely to go on repeating himself . . . so long as a person is searching for better ways of doing his work, he is fairly safe.

Absurd | Enough | Faith | Life | Life | Truth | Trial |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

LAVINIA: I love everything that grows simply-- up toward the sun-- everything that's straight and strong! I hate what's warped and twists and eats into itself and dies for a lifetime in shadow...

Life | Life | Love | Right | Time |

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

There is only one thing to do — take it to the country!

Incompetence | Life | Life | People | Success | System | War |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

In fact, the French - who read and theorise the most - became so addicted to political experiment that in the two centuries since our own rather drab revolution they have exuberantly produced one Directory, one Consulate, two empires, three restorations of the monarchy, and five republics. That's what happens when you take writing too seriously.

Birth | Contradiction | Life | Life |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.

Care | Life | Life | People | Public | World |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Literature in the written sense represents the triumph of language over writing: the subversion of writing for purposes that have little or nothing to do with social and economic control.

Death | Equanimity | Eternal | Evil | Fear | Grace | Life | Life | Men | Reward | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Since nothing is free, to each his price.

Life | Life | Wrong |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.

Life | Life |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Sexual revelation in literature, must be tactful and must serve plot

Life | Life | Meaning | Nothing | Novels |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.

Deeds | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Vision | Wise | Work | Deeds |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).

Darkness | Death | Defeat | Earth | Failure | Hope | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mystery | Nothing | Power | Reading | Sadness | Will | Failure |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Apparently, "conspiracy stuff" is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.

Death | Harmony | Life | Life | Love |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those “liberals” who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the highest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.

Life | Life | People | Wrong |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.

Life | Life |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

TodayÂ’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they canÂ’t read them either.

Life | Life | Words |