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

Ezra Taft Benson

My young sisters, we have such hope for you. We have such great expectations for you. Don't settle for less than what the Lord wants you to be... Give me a young woman who loves home and family, who reads and ponders the scriptures daily, who has a burning testimony of the Book of Mormon... Give me a young woman who is virtuous and who has maintained her personal purity, who will not settle for less than a temple marriage, and I will give you a young woman who will perform miracles for the Lord now and throughout eternity.

Change | Means | Position | Repentance | Will |

Ezra Taft Benson

One good yardstick as to whether a person might be the right one for you is this: in her presence, do you think your noblest thoughts, do you aspire to your finest deeds, do you wish you were better than you are?

Appearance | Change | Character | Day | Disgrace | Heart | Important | Injustice | Injustice | Joy | Lesson | Pain | Parents | Peace | Play | Resolution | Understanding | Circumstance | Teacher |

Felix Adler

Here are two kinds of light, the light on the hither side of the darkness and the light beyond the darkness. We must press on through the darkness and the terror of it if we would reach the holier light beyond. We are here — no matter who put us here, or how we came here — to fulfill a task. We cannot afford to go of our own volition until the last item of our duty is discharged.

Aims | Deeds | Fate | Good | Question | Will | World | Fate | Deeds |

Felix Adler

The right for the right's sake is the motto which everyone should take for his own life. With that as a standard of value we can descend into our hearts, appraise ourselves, and determine in how far we already are moral beings, in how far not yet.

Future | Indispensable | Individual | Service | Time | Will |

Felix Adler

We have already transgressed the limit of safety, and the present disorders of our time are but precursors of other and imminent dangers. The rudder of our ship has ceased to move obedient to the helm. We are drifting on the seething tide of business, each one absorbed in holding his own in the giddy race of competition, each one engrossed in immediate cares and seldom disturbed by thoughts of larger concerns and ampler interests. Even our domestic life has lost much of its former warmth and geniality.

Change | World |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

In the superman Nietzsche gave the world the conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. Remained there but still a problem and it was this: When the Superman Appears at last on earth, what then? Will there be another super superman to follow and another super-superman after that? In the end, man will become the equal of the creator of the universe, whoever or whatever He may be? Or will a period of decline after eating, with long return down the line, down through the superman to man again, and then on to the anthropoid ape, to the lower mammals, to the asexual cell, and, finally, to mere inert matter, gas, ether, and empty space?

Question | Talking |

Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra

I want to work with the big orchestras. I want to have a big family.

Change |

Gustavo Gutiérrez

I am firmly convinced that poverty?this sub-human condition in which the majority of humanity lives today?is more than a social issue. Poverty poses a major challenge to every Christian conscience and therefore to theology as well. People today often talk about contextual theologies but, in point of fact, theology has always been contextual. Some theologies, it is true, may be more conscious of and explicit about their contextuality, but all theological investigation is necessarily carried out within a specific historical context. When Augustine wrote The City of God, he was reflecting on what it meant for him and for his contemporaries to live the Gospel within a specific context of serious historical transformations. Our context today is characterized by a glaring disparity between the rich and the poor. No serious Christian can quietly ignore this situation. It is no longer possible for someone to say, ?Well, I didn?t know? about the suffering of the poor. Poverty has a visibility today that it did not have in the past. The faces of the poor must now be confronted. And we also understand the causes of poverty and the conditions that perpetuate it. There was a time when poverty was considered to be an unavoidable fate, but such a view is no longer possible or responsible. Now we know that poverty is not simply a misfortune; it is an injustice.

Little | Question |

Hannah Arendt

Man by working and fabricating and building a world inhabited only by himself would still be a fabricator, though not homo faber: he would have lost his specifically human quality and, rather, be a god - not, to be sure, the Creator, but a divine demiurge as Plato described him in one of his myths.

Change |

Italian Proverbs

One who wants to keep their yard tidy does not reserve a plot for the weeds.

Change | Civilization | Future | Global | Health | Inconvenient | Land | Security | Will |

Italian Proverbs

One who speaks fair words feeds you with an empty spoon.

Attention | Change | Conversation | Global | Land | Need |

Italian Proverbs

One must have been controlled in the same situation one wishes to properly control others.

Change | People | World | Think |

Italian Proverbs

Plenty of words when the cause is lost.

Change |

Italian Proverbs

Starting properly ensures the speedy completion of a process. A beginning is often blocked by one or more obstacles (potential barriers) the removal of which may ensure the smooth course of the process.

Office | People | Question | Will |

Italian Proverbs

No day but has its evening.

Competition | Focus | Important | Love | Question | Will |

Italian Proverbs

t is better to ride a donkey that carries you than a horse that throws you.

Change | Opinion | Public |

Italian Proverbs

When a wife sins the husband is never innocent.

Education | Ideas | Justify | Knowledge | Learning | Literature | Need | People | Question | Study | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Value |

Italian Proverbs

There is no beard so well shaven but another barber will find something more to shave from it.

Better | Opinion | Question | World |

Italian Proverbs

To every saint his torch.

Effort | Good | Hope | Important | Question |

Italian Proverbs

When all men say you are an ass it is time to bray.

Failure | Future | Life | Life | Mistake | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Right | Failure |