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

I have sipped the so-called Wine of Life and paid the price of shame.

Life | Life | Play | Price | Rest | Spirit |

Eugen Herrigel

Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! he exclaimed. The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.

Aptitude | Awareness | Cult | Danger | Ego | Existence | Life | Life | Present | Reason | Right | Spirit | Success | Time | Witness | Worth | Talent | Danger | Awareness | Teacher |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

It is easy to distinguish two ideas absolutely simple; but in proportion as they become more complex, the difficulties increase. Then as our notions resemble each other in more respects, there is reason to fear lest we take many of them for one only, or at least that we do not distinguish them as much as we might. This frequently happens in. metaphysics and morals. The subject which we have actually in hand, is a very sensible proof of the difficulties that are to be surmounted. On these occasions we cannot be too cautious in pointing out even the minutest differences.

Imagination | Present |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

With regard to natural cries, this man shall form them, as soon as he feels the passions to which they belong. However they will not be signs in respect to him the first time; because instead of reviving .his perceptions, they will as yet be no more than consequences of those perceptions.

Character | Necessity | Order | Present | Words |

Eugene Peterson

Intimacy [with God] does not preclude reverence. True intimacy does not eliminate a sacred awe.

Life | Life | Need | Present |

Eudora Welty

For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

Art | Awareness | Mortal | Past | Present | Art | Awareness |

Eudora Welty

Since we must and do write each our own way, we may during actual writing get more lasting instruction not from another's work, whatever its blessings, however better it is than ours, but from our own poor scratched-over pages. For these we can hold up to life. That is, we are born with a mind and heart to hold each page up to, and to ask: is it valid?

Spirit |

Eugene Peterson

That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they're blue in the face and not get it.

Bible | Control | Enough | God | Mystery | Parents | Present | Reading | Receive | Relationship | Trust | God | Bible | Learn | Think | Understand |

Eugene Peterson

There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations called holiness.

Age | Experience | Future | God | Old age | People | Soul | Spirit | Study | Theology | God | Old |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Professor Frank recalled my idle remark some years ago: 'Never pass up the opportunity to have sex or appear on television.' Advice I would never give today in the age of AIDS and its television equivalent Fox News.

Business | Enough | Kill | Business |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

With faith and hope and courage we hold our heads erect and with dauntless spirit marshal the working class for the march from Capitalism to Socialism, from Slavery to Freedom, from Barbarism to Civilization.

Courage | Hell | History | Labor | Men | Need | Spirit | Struggle | Time | Will | World | Writing |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

If you want to rise in politics in the United States, there is one subject you must stay away from, and that is politics.

People | Spirit |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

It is curious how little interested we are in the sexual desires of those who do not attract us.

History | People | Thought | Will | Think | Thought |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The behavior of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.

Good | Little | Past | Present | Thought | World | Thought |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The reason no one has yet been able to come up with a good word to describe the homosexualist (sometimes known as gay, fag, queer, etc.) is because he does not exist. The human race is divided into male and female. Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex, many don't; many respond to both. This plurality is the fact of our nature and not worth fretting about.

Public |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Woman must be given her true place in society by the working class.

Barbarism | Capitalism | Courage | Faith | Hope | Slavery | Spirit |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, "Well, so-and-so will like this," which you do when you're younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.

Power |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

Labor | Land | Present | Right | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns.

Battle | Criticism | Day | Life | Life | Literature | Nothing | Order | Present | Will |