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

Emma Goldman

The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.

Authority | Church | Nothing | Self-denial |

Faith Jegede

The fact that we are different doesn't mean that one of us is wrong — it just means that there's a different kind of right.

Chance | Change | Progress |

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super-sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.

Church | Parents | Will | Friends |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story.

Better | Day | Nothing | Progress | Sorrow | Will | Writing |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

We see that man entirely resembles the higher mammals, and most of all the apes, in embryonic development as well as in anatomic structure. And if we seek to understand this ontogenetic agreement in the light of the biogenetic law, we find that it proves clearly and necessarily the descent of man from a series of other mammals, and proximately from the primates.

Church | Education | Existence | Important | Influence | Need | Order | Public |

Estonian Proverbs

Who grows up without fear will live without honor.

Church |

Eugene Peterson

I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business.

Books | Choice | Church | Size | Learn |

Eugene Peterson

But then it begins to develop a culture and language and hierarchy all its own. It becomes first a special interest, and then a specialization. That is what seems to be happening in the circles you are frequenting. I seriously doubt that it is a healthy (holy) line to be pursuing.

Attention | Church | People |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

Our declamatory speaking is therefore naturally less expressive than music. For I want to know what sound is best adapted to express any particular passion? In the first place, it must surely be that which imitates the natural sign of this passion; and' this is common both to declamation and music.

Prejudice | Progress |

Eugene Peterson

You can see now from my comments that my gut feeling is that the most mature and reliable Christian guidance and understanding comes out of the most immediate and local of settings. The ordinary way. We have to break this cultural habit of sending out for an expert every time we feel we need some assistance. Wisdom is not a matter of expertise.

Church | Prayer | Will |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

The prosody of different languages does not deviate equally from music. In some it affects a greater, in some a lesser variety of accents, because from the variety of constitutions in people of different climates, it is impossible they should have the same sensibility.

Impression | Perception | Progress |

Eugene Peterson

Perseverance does not mean “perfection.” It means we do not quit when we find that we are not yet mature and there is a long journey still before us.

Church | Time |

Eugene Peterson

Devotions are the discipline of being quiet and listening for what we donÂ’t hear in the streets, in the media, in the workplace.

Church | Ecstasy | God | God |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

In this country — the most favored beneath the bending skies — we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child — and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity…

Men | Nature | Prison | Progress |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.

Agitation | Discontent | Progress |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

In any case, write what you know will always be excellent advice to those who ought not to write at all.

Books | Church | Meaning | Silence | Talking | Time | Writing |

Evelyn Underhill

Many people seem to think that the spiritual life necessarily requires a definite and exacting plan of study. It does not. But it does require a definite plan of life; and courage in sticking to the plan, not for merely days or weeks, but for years.

Angels | Beauty | Church | Ends | Little | Universe | Worship | Beauty |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Downstairs Peter Beste-Chetwynde mixed himself another brandy and soda and turned a page in Havelock Ellis, which, next to The Wind in the Willows, was his favourite book.

Church | Faith | Father | Hunger | People | Religion | Right | Words | Worth | Think |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

He wasn't a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending to be whole.

Church | Right | Talking |

Evelyn Underhill

This, of course, is what religion is about: this adherence to God, this confident dependence on that which is unchanging. This is the more abundant life which, in its own particular language and own particular way, it calls us to live. Because it is our part in the one life in the whole universe of spirits, our share in the great drive towards Reality, the tendency of all life to seek God Who made it for Himself and now incites and guides it, we are already adapted to it. Just as a fish is adapted to life in the sea. This view of our situation fills us with a certain awed and humble gladness. It delivers us from all niggling fuss about ourselves, prevents us from feeling self-important about our own little spiritual adventures; and yet makes them worthwhile as part of one great spiritual adventure.

Church | God | Longing | Soul | Spirit | World | God |