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

If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.

Courage | Devotion | Men |

Emile Zola

We have before us the ignoble spectacle of men who are sunken in debts and crimes being hailed as innocent, whereas the honor of a man whose life is spotless is being vilely attacked: A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay.

Devotion | Dignity | Honor | Love | Nothing | Respect | Will | Respect |

Ernest Becker

For all organisms, then, opposing and obliterating power is evil – it threatens to stop experience. But men are truly sorry creatures because they have made death conscious. They can see evil in anything that wounds them, causes ill health, or even deprives them of pleasure. Consciousness means too that they have to be preoccupied with evil even in the absence of any immediate danger; their lives become a meditation on evil and a planned venture for controlling it and forestalling it.

Body | Contradiction | Man | People | Worth |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.

Danger | Death | Detachment | Devotion | Justice | Men | Danger |

Eudora Welty

Insight doesn't happen often on the click of the moment, like a lucky snapshot, but comes in its own time and more slowly and from nowhere but within.

Devotion | Learning | Writing |

Eudora Welty

For all of them told happenings like narrations, chronological and careful, as if the ear of the world listened and wished to know surely.

Devotion | Writing |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

In fact, the French - who read and theorise the most - became so addicted to political experiment that in the two centuries since our own rather drab revolution they have exuberantly produced one Directory, one Consulate, two empires, three restorations of the monarchy, and five republics. That's what happens when you take writing too seriously.

Birth | Contradiction | Life | Life |

Euripedes NULL

What other creatures are bred so exquisitely and purposefully for mistreatment as women are?

Contradiction | Man | Mortal | Nature | World |

Ezra Taft Benson

We must not be cast down or discouraged in this work. There is no basis for discouragement. We are not alone. We will not, we cannot fail if we will do our duty. The Lord will magnify us even beyond our present talents and abilities.

Authority | Better | Blessings | Confidence | Devotion | God | Honor | Law | Little | Lord | Man | Nature | Principles | Tradition | Trust | Will | Wisdom | Wise | God |