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

It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.

Experience | Time |

Evelyn Glennie, fully Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie

Music is about communication... it isn't just something that maybe physically sounds good or orally sounds interesting; it's something far, far deeper than that.

Contrast | Experience |

Evelyn Underhill

There is no place in my soul, no corner of my character, where God is not.

Action | Beginning | Experience | God | Need | Order | Present | Spirit | God |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

People find ideas a bore because they do not distinguish between live ones and stuffed ones on a shelf.

Attention | Criticism | Men |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

I could I trust starve like a gentleman. It's listed as part of the poetic training, you know.

Criticism | Work | Value |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.

Blessings | Experience |

Felix Adler

For a long time the conviction has been dimly felt in the community that, without prejudice to existing institutions, the legal day of weekly rest might be employed to advantage for purposes affecting the general good.

Criticism | Literature | Seclusion | Will |

Felix Adler

The moral order never is, but is ever becoming. It grows with our growth.

Criticism | Desire | Doubt | Faith | Improvement | Individual | Life | Life | Nations | Regard | Sacred | Intellect |

Felix Adler

Dogma is the convictions of one man imposed authoritatively upon others.

Experience | Religion | Spirit | Afraid |

Felix Adler

Theories of what is true have their day. They come and go, leave their deposit in the common stock of knowledge, and are supplanted by other more convincing theories. The thinkers and investigators of the world are pledged to no special theory, but feel themselves free to search for the greater truth beyond the utmost limits of present knowledge. So likewise in the field of moral truth, it is our hope, that men in proportion as they grow more enlightened, will learn to hold their theories and their creeds more loosely, and will none the less, nay, rather all the more be devoted to the supreme end of practical righteousness to which all theories and creeds must be kept subservient. There are two purposes then which we have in view: To secure in the moral and religious life perfect intellectual liberty, and at the same time to secure concert in action. There shall be no shackles upon the mind, no fetters imposed in early youth which the growing man or woman may feel prevented from shaking off, no barrier set up which daring thought may not transcend. And on the other hand there shall be unity of effort, the unity that comes of an end supremely prized and loved, the unity of earnest, morally aspiring persons, engaged in the conflict with moral evil.

Aid | Cause | Culture | Evolution | Experience | Faith | Force | Humanity | Life | Life | Mankind | Morality | Nature | Optimism | Past | Peace | Pessimism | Power | Will |

Italian Proverbs

Poor men do penance for rich men's sins.

Experience | Openness | People | Personality | Safe |

Italian Proverbs

The eye of the master fattens the horse.

Experience | Life | Life | Principles | Psychology | Time | Youth | Youth |

Italian Proverbs

Never judge by appearances; Judge not a man and things at first sight.

Control | Experience |

Italian Proverbs

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

Politics | Vision | Will |

Italian Proverbs

One enemy is too much for a man, and a hundred friends too few.

Politics |

Italian Proverbs

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

Experience | Nature | Organization |

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

At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell, as soon as as he began to attend to them. Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above the seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike, until he felt that an endless river of swelling gold and silver was flowing over him, too multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended; it became part of the throbbing air about him, and it drenched and drowned him. swiftly he sank under its shining weight into a deep realm of sleep.

Abuse | Experience | Life | Life | Little | Means | Men | Problems | Suicide | Trust | Work | World | Learn |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

In plain words; now that Britain has told the world she has the H-Bomb, she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject, in all circumstances, nuclear warfare. This is not pacifism. There is no suggestion here of abandoning the immediate defence of this island...No, what should be abandoned is the idea of deterrence-by-threat-of-retaliation. There is no real security in it, no decency in it, no faith, hope, nor charity in it.

Earth | Experience | Need | Revolution | Sacred | Will | Value |

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

A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.

Curiosity | Error | Experience | Important | Life | Life | Nothing | Past | Pleasure | Price | Pride | Sense | Story | Teach | Time | Waiting | Will | Wrong |