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

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 moral order never is, but is ever becoming. It grows with our growth.

Criticism | Desire | Doubt | Faith | Improvement | Individual | Life | Life | Nations | Regard | Sacred | Intellect |

Ezra Taft Benson

Beloved youth, you will have your trials and temptations through which you must pass, but there are great moments of eternity which lie ahead. You have our love and our confidence. We pray that you will be prepared for the reins of leadership. We say to you, "Arise and shine forth" and be a light unto the world, a standard to others.

Health | History | Rights | Strength | System | Will |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

Speak against unconscious oppression, speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, speak against bonds.

Little | People | Smile | Space |

Felix Adler

The peace that passeth understanding is that which comes when the pain is not relieved, which subsists in the midst of the painful situation, suffusing it, which springs out of the pain itself, which shimmers on the crest of the wave of pain, which is the spear of frustration transfigured into the shaft of light. It is upon those we love that we must anchor ourselves spiritually in the last moments. The sense of interconnectedness with them stands out vividly by way of contrast at the very moment when our mortal connection with them is about to be dissolved. And the intertwining of our life with theirs, the living in the life that is in them, is but a part of our living in the infinite manifold of the spiritual life. The thought of this, as apprehended, not in terms of knowledge, but in immediate experience, begets the peace that passeth understanding. And it is upon the bosom of that peace that we can pass safely out of the realm of time and space.

Future | Past | Problems | Thinkers | Thought | Warning | Thought |

Felix Adler

The platform of an Ethical Society is itself the altar; the address must be the fire that burns thereon.

Contrast | Life | Life | Love | Mortal | Pain | Peace | Sense | Thought | Time | Understanding | Thought |

Felix Adler

There is a great and crying evil in modern society. It is want of purpose. It is that narrowness of vision which shuts out the wider vistas of the soul. It is the absence of those sublime emotions which, wherever they arise, do not fall to exalt and consecrate existence.

Difficulty | Heart | Influence | Meaning | Men | Right | Understand |

Felix Adler

There is a city to be built, the plan of which we carry in our heads, in our hearts. Countless generations have already toiled at the building of it. The effort to aid in completing it, with us, takes the place of prayer. In this sense we say, "Laborare est orare."

Daring | Life | Life | Man | Men | Present | Righteousness | Search | Theories | Thinkers | Thought | Time | Truth | Unity | Will | Woman | World | Youth | Youth | Learn | Thought |

Gustave Flaubert

None of us can ever express the exact measure of our needs, or our ideas, or our sorrows, and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when we long to inspire pity in the stars.

Play |

Gustavo Gutiérrez

If there is no friendship with them [the poor] and no sharing of the life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals.

Think |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for any office of trust in the United States.

Thought | Woman | Thought |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

Hannah Arendt

The greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons

Thought | Wise | Thought |

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

Poor men's money and cowards' weapons are often flourished.

Self |

Italian Proverbs

Step by step one goes to Rome.

History |

Italian Proverbs

Of what does not concern you say nothing, good or bad.

Consideration | Man | Nothing |

Italian Proverbs

No news is good news.

Innovation |

Italian Proverbs

Of the wealth of the world each has as much as they take.

Affliction | Gloom | Light |