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

Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki

No penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure.

Art | Effort | Learning | Reward | Study | Will | Worth | Art |

Hu Shih, or Hú Shì

And lastly, the political revolutions from 1911 to the present time have done more to bring about tremendous social changes everywhere than even the economic and industrial changes and the new schools.

Culture | Language | Learning |

Egyptian Proverbs

When a slave mounts a camel he wants to ride on both humps.

Learning |

Elizabeth Gilbert

He is only happy when he can maintain himself - mentally and spiritually - at the intersection between a vertical line and horizontal one, in a state of perfect balance. For this, he needs to know where he is located every moment, both in his relationship to the divine and to his family here on earth. If he loses that balance, he loses his power.

Learning | Words |

Elizabeth Gilbert

LIZ: What's it like in hell? KETUT: Same like heaven. Universe is a circle, Liss. To up, to down -- all same, at end. LIZ: Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell? KETUT: Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss. LIZ: You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell -- same destinations -- are the same thing anyway? KETUT: Same-same. Same in end, so better be happy on journey.

Learning |

Elizabeth Gilbert

By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later—again, for its own mysterious reasons.

Care | Credit | Justification | Learning | Need | Pleasure | Right |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.

Discipline | Good | Learning | Peace | Solitude | Speech | Words | World |

Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

There is nothing about which I am more anxious than my country, and for its sake I am willing to die ten deaths, if that be possible.

Learning | Woman |

Emma Goldman

The great and inspiring aims of the Revolution became so clouded with and obscured by the methods used by the ruling political power that it was hard to distinguish what was temporary means and what final purpose. Psychologically and socially the means necessarily influence and alter the aims. The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization. In that lies the real tragedy of the Bolshevik philosophy as applied to the Russian Revolution. May this lesson not be in vain.

God | Learning | Mind | Phenomena | Science | God | Understand |

English Proverbs

A little of what you fancy does you good.

Learning | Little |

Eric S. Raymond

Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.

Better | Enlightenment | Experience | Learning | Rest | Will | Worth |

Ernest Becker

What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types—biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one's own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Every­one reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him.

Dignity | Effort | Good | Learning | Mortal | Nobility | Paradox | Time | Unique |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

How much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.

Learning | Life | Life | Little | Man | Nothing | Thought | Time | Wonder | Old | Think | Thought |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

As a Nobel Prize winner I cannot but regret that the award was never given to Mark Twain, nor to Henry James, speaking only of my own countrymen. Greater writers than these also did not receive the prize. I would have been happy — happier — today if the prize had been given to that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.

Better | Learning | Play |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway said: The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

Knowing | Learning | Worth |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.

Cruelty | Day | Important | Learning | Light | Man | Occupation | People | Sacrifice | Will | Cruelty | Value |

Eudora Welty

Insight doesn't happen often on the click of the moment, like a lucky snapshot, but comes in its own time and more slowly and from nowhere but within.

Devotion | Learning | Writing |

Eugene Peterson

What does make a difference is the personal relationships that we create and develop.

Guarantee | Learning |

Euripedes NULL

Who then will dare to say I'm weak or timid? No, they'll say I'm loyal as a friend, ruthless as a foe, so much like a hero destined for glory.

Learning | Past | Youth | Youth |