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 Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

There is no form of platitudes that cannot be easily converted into iambic pentameter. If a person has learned to count to ten, it is not difficult to start a new line with each syllable of the eleventh or repel every second syllable accented.

Ignorance | Present |

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

What about the lame, the sick and the destitute? Is an often-voiced question. Most other countries in the world have attempted to use the power of government to meet this need. Yet, in every case, the improvement has been marginal at best and has resulted in the long run creating more misery, more poverty, and certainly less freedom than when government first stepped in. Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own… The harm dome by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional ‘do-gooder,’ who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others—with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.

God | Means | Talent | God |

Faye Wattleton

I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus.

Means | Nature | Sacrifice | Will | Think |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

My life has been devoted to peacemaking.

Day | God | Means | Peace | Religion | God |

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 |

Felix Adler

There is a difficulty in the way of teaching the higher life, due to the fact that only those who have begun to lead it can understand the meaning of it. Nevertheless, all men can be induced to begin to lead it. Though they seem blind, their eyes can be opened so as to see. Deep down in every human heart is the seed of a diviner life, which only needs the quickening influence of right conditions to germinate.

Aid | Effort | Plan | Sense |

Felix Adler

We propose to entirely exclude prayer and every form of ritual. Thus shall we avoid even the appearance of interfering with those to whom prayer and ritual, as a mode of expressing religious sentiment, are dear. And on the other hand we shall be just to those who have ceased to regard them as satisfactory and dispensed with them in their own persons.

Life | Life | Present | Race | Time |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certainties?. but there are no certainties.

Means | Wife |

Italian Proverbs

Sometimes the lees are better than the wine.

Little | Means | Will |

Italian Proverbs

The father a saint the son a devil.

Culture | Means |

Italian Proverbs

The ass does not know the worth of this tail till he has lost it.

Books | Character | Effort | Hope | Judgment | Will | Work | Realism |

Italian Proverbs

That which the wise man does first, the fool does last.

People | Present | Relationship |

Italian Proverbs

Summer is the mother of the poor.

Democracy | Good | Means | Vision |

Italian Proverbs

No one ever kicks a dead dog.

Art | Means | People | Art |

Italian Proverbs

Speak of the Devil and he appears.

Means |

Italian Proverbs

So good that he is good for nothing.

Effort | Good | Internet | People | Power | Promise | Time |

Italian Proverbs

Two women and a goose make a market.

Doubt | Irony | Life | Life | Means | Need | Plenty | Self | Superiority | Understanding | Work | World | Afraid |

Italian Proverbs

To every saint his torch.

Effort | Good | Hope | Important | Question |

Italian Proverbs

War makes robbers, and peace hangs them.

Authenticity | Good | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Mystery | Thought | Worth | Thought |