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

Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day... The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun.

Birth | Body | Earth | Enjoyment | Guarantee | Heart | Human nature | Individual | Liberty | Men | Mind | Nature | Observation | Order | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Restraint | Soul | Study | Teach | Wickedness | Will | World |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

She bounded before me, and returned to my side, and was off again like a young greyhound; and, at first, I found plenty of entertainment in listening to the larks singing far and near; and enjoying the sweet, warm sunshine; and watching her, my pet, and my delight, with her golden ringlets flying loose behind, and her bright cheek, as soft and pure in its bloom, as a wild rose, and her eyes radiant with cloudless pleasure. She was a happy creature, and an angel in those days. It is a pity she could not stay content.

Earth | Mind | Nature | Passion |

Emma Goldman

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.

Body | Earth | Fear | Glory | Life | Life | Man | Morality | Pain | Religion | Self-denial | Sorrow | Soul | Struggle |

Emma Goldman

Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods; nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since gods began.

Earth | Love | Magic | Man | Power | World |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

A perfect misanthropist's heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A

Earth | Heaven | Light | Little | Love | Rest | Restraint | Truth |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

It is not in him to be loved like me: how can she love in him what he has not?

Business | Heaven | Man | Business |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

He had been content with daily labor and rough animal enjoyments, 'till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompts to higher pursuits; and, instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavors to raise himself had produced just the contrary result.

Change | Heaven | Kill |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

He was, and is yet, most likely, the wearisomest, self-righteous pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself, and fling the curses on his neighbors.

Ecstasy | Heaven |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

Time brought resignation and a melancholy sweeter than common joy.

Earth | Existence | Man |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

Only two pointed arrows betrayal of violence is similar to injure users of worse enemies.

Day | Ecstasy | Heaven | Lying | Music | World | Happiness |

Emma Goldman

But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it endure under Anarchism? Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities. Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations. This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women the world over; a conclusion resulting from the close and studious observation of the tendencies of modern society: individual liberty and economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in man.

Atheism | Belief | Earth | Fighting | God | Individual | Influence | Man | Power | Rule | Servitude | Thought | God | Thought |

Emma Goldman

Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king.

Earth | Force | Gold | Life | Life | Little | Love | Magic | Man | Power | World |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

But I begin to fancy you don't like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and despised each other, they could not avoid loving me. (Catherine Linton, nee Earnshaw)

Distress | Earth | Ends | Harmony | Impatience | Music | Struggle | Truth |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.

Duty | Earth | Eternity | Happy | Hell | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Peculiarity | Repose |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

Instead of a wild, hatless little savage jumping into the house, and rushing to squeeze us all breathless, there lighted from a handsome black pony a very dignified person with brown ringlets falling from the cover of a feathered beaver, and a long cloth habit which she was obliged to hold up with both hands that she might sail in.

Earth | Heaven | Spirit |

Emma Goldman

Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.

Earth | Freedom | Gold | Life | Life | Love | Magic | Man | Power | World |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

I am the only being whose doom no tongue would ask no eye would mourn I never caused a thought of gloom a smile of joy since I was born in secret pleasure — secret tears this changeful life has slipped away as friendless after eighteen years as lone as on my natal day.

Earth | Eternity | Happy | Hell | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Repose |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

I remember the master, before he fell into a doze, stroking her bonny hair - it pleased him rarely to see her gentle - and saying - 'Why canst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?' And she turned her face up to his, and laughed, and answered, 'Why cannot you always be a good man, father?

Better | Heaven | Little | Need | Past | Safe | World |

Emma Goldman

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name!

Heaven | Hell | Promise |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties for want of occasions for frittering away your life on silly trifles.

Angels | Devil | Heaven | Love | Time |