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 Bonnot de Condillac

Music must naturally have been criticized in proportion as it improved, especially if its progress was considerable and subitaneous: for then it differs most from the sounds to which our ear is accustomed. But if we begin to be used to it, then it pleases, and it is prejudice any longer to oppose it.

Circumstances | Order | Power | Present |

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 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 |

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 Peterson

If we define the nature of our lives by the mistake of the moment or the defeat of the hour or the boredom of the day, we will define it wrongly. We need roots in the past to give obedience ballast and breadth; we need a vision of the future to give obedience direction and goal. There must be an organic unity between past and future lived in the present.

Experience | Feelings | Heart | Little | Need | Past | People | Will | Work | Value |

Eugene Peterson

If we're trying to set education policy, we have to listen to the education experts.

Defeat | Future | Mistake | Nature | Need | Obedience | Organic | Past | Unity | Vision | Will |

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 |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

For a moment I lost myself, actually lost my life. I was set free! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life . . . to life itself. I caught a glimpse of something greater than myself.

Beauty | Dawn | Freedom | Fulfillment | Good | Joy | Life | Life | Lying | Past | Peace | Sound | Unity | Vision | Beauty | Old |

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 |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!

Happy | Past |

Eudora Welty

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

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

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 |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country.

Heart | Kill | Love | Past | Reading | Time |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.

Age | Attention | Land | Order | Past |

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 |