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

Emil M. Cioran

Getting up in the middle of the night, I walked around my room with the certainty of being chosen and criminal, a double privilege natural to the sleepless, revolting or incomprehensible for the captives of daytime logic.

Existence | Forgiveness | Happy | Light | Soul | Will | Forgiveness |

Dorothy Parker

If I had a shiny gun I could have a world of fun speeding bullets through the brains of the folks that cause me pains.

Fun | Looks |

Dorothy Parker

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

Dread | Dreams | Hate | Love | Peace | Soul | Spirit | Thought | World | Thought |

Emil Nolde

Colours in vibration, peeling like silver bells and clanging like bronze bells, proclaiming happiness, passion and love, soul, blood and death.

Religion | Soul |

Emile Zola

These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here.

Deliberation | Little | People | Soul | World | Deliberation |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Earth is a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true.

Emile Zola

Did not one spend the first half of one's days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

It was not death, for I stood up, and all the dead lie down; it was not night, for all the bells put out their tongues, for noon. It was not frost, for on my flesh I felt siroccos crawl, nor fire, for just my marble feet could keep a chancel cool. And yet it tasted like them all; the figures I have seen set orderly, for burial, reminded me of mine, as if my life were shaven and fitted to a frame, and could not breathe without a key; and I was like midnight, some, when everything that ticked has stopped, and space stares, all around, or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, repeal the beating ground. But most like chaos,--stopless, cool, without a chance or spar,-- or even a report of land to justify despair.

Eternity | Mortal | Noise | Quiet | World |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

Then I will not repine knowing that bird of mine though flown shall in a distant tree bright melody for me return.

Day | Death | Earth | Heaven |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

The soul should always stand ajar, that if the heaven inquire, he will not be obliged to wait, or shy of troubling her. Depart, before the host has slid the bolt upon the door, to seek for the accomplished guest, -- her visitor no more.

Majority | Soul |

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

For the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand, because no fire came near to explode it.

Day | Promise | Sorrow | Soul |

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

Winter is not here yet. There’s a little flower, up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up and pluck it to show papa?

God | Heart | Love | Nothing | Right | Satan | Soul | Will | God | Forgive |

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 |

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

If he were in my place and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that became my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him... Never would have missed her company, while she wanted. At the moment the affection disappeared, I would have ripped the heart and drank his blood. But until then... would have let me die in pieces before touching a hair on his head.

Love | Power | Soul |

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

No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall.

Faith | God | Life | Life | Power | Soul | God |

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

Although he loved her with all the strength of his miserable being, not love as much in eighty years as I do in a day

Soul |

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

Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! How can I bear it? was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish: they did not melt.

Agony | Soul | Think |

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

But there's this difference: one is gold put to the use of paving-stones, and the other is tin polished to ape a service of silver.

Bible | Man | Bible | Old |

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

I cried so much for him as for her, sometimes we have compassion for creatures that do not have this feeling not for themselves nor for others.

Better | Care | Love | Nothing |