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

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

As the moths around a taper, as the bees around a rose, as the gnats around a vapour, so the spirits group and close round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.

Heart | Light | Love | Silence | Speech | Teach | Words |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering against my tremulous hands which loose the string and let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said, -- he wished to have me in his sight once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring to come and touch my hand ... a simple thing, Yet I wept for it! -- this... the paper's light... said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed as if God's future thundered on my past. This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paled with lying at my heart that beat too fast. And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availed if, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

Heart | Strength |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sleep on, Baby, on the floor, tired of all the playing, sleep with smile the sweeter for that you dropped away in! On your curls' full roundness stand golden lights serenely-- one cheek, pushed out by the hand, folds the dimple inly.

Earth | Heaven | Joy |

Elizabeth Gilbert

When you have only two minutes to say good-bye to the person you love most in the world, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again, you can become log-jammed with the effort to say and do and settle everything at once.

Better | Distress | Heart | Inquiry | Question | Security | Will |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Think, in mounting higher, the angels would press on us, and aspire to drop some golden orb of perfect song Into our deep, dear silence.

Earth | Glory | God | Heaven | Sound | God |

Elizabeth Lesser

What will matter is the good we did, not the good we expected others to do.

Beginning | Body | Earth | Heart | Mind | Pain | Solitude | Spirit | Spirituality | Time |

Elizabeth Gilbert

That you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong instead.

Heart |

Elizabeth Gilbert

To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.

Balance | Earth | Will | World |

Elizabeth Gilbert

When the dust has settled years later, we might ask ourselves, What was I thinking? and the answer is usually: You weren’t. Psychologists call that state of deluded madness narcissistic love. I call it my twenties.

Heart | Soul | Thinking |

Elizabeth Lesser

One of the problems of contemporary culture is that life moves at such a quick pace, we usually don't give ourselves time to feel and listen deeply. You may have to take deliberate action to nurture the soul. If you want to increase your soul's bank account, you may have to seek out the unfamiliar and do things that at first could feel uncomfortable. Give yourself time as you experiment. How will you know if you're on the right track? I like Rumi's counsel: 'When you do something from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.'

Age | Better | Cause | Earth | Enlightenment | Fame | Famous | Fortune | Good | Illusion | Kill | Labor | Light | Man | Mind | Money | People | Present | Problems | Shame | Terrorism | Work | Worry | Instruction | Understand |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The critics say that epics have died out with Agamemnon and the goat-nursed gods; I'll not believe it. I could never deem as Payne Knight did, that Homer's heroes measured twelve feet high. They were but men: -his Helen's hair turned grey like any plain Miss Smith's who wears a front; And Hector's infant whimpered at a plume as yours last Friday at a turkey-cock. All heroes are essential men, and all men possible heroes: every age, heroic in proportions, double faced, looks backward and before, expects a morn and claims an epos.

Heart | Man | Silence |

Elizabeth Gilbert

The sound universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there's a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of night the dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters.

Heart | Teach |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Or from Browning some Pomegranate, which, if cut deep down the middle, shows a heart within blood-tinctured of a veined humanity.

Heart | Will |

Elizabeth Gilbert

You must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.

Earth | World |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Eternity stands always fronting God; a stern colossal image, with blind eyes, and grand dim lips, that murmur evermore, "God - God - God!"

Disdain | Doubt | Earth | Heart | Life | Life | Little |

Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.

Brotherhood | Devotion | Heart | Justice | Old |

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Before night something beautiful will happen to change everything.

Earth | Smile | Worth |

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There is new strength, repose of mind, and inspiration in fresh apparel.

Heart | Men |

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

It has ever been since time began, and ever will be, till time lose breath, that love is a mood - no more - to man, and love to a woman is life or death.

Earth | Humanity | Time | Will |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

With stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right the music of my nature.

Earth |