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

Estonian Proverbs

Who shouts at home will bark away from home.

Will |

Estonian Proverbs

The mistakes of other people are good teachers.

Husband | Marriage | Wife |

Eudora Welty

My main disappointment was always that a book had to end. And then what? But I don't think I was ever disappointed by the books. I must have been what any author would consider an ideal reader. I felt every pain and pleasure suffered or enjoyed by all the characters. Oh, but I identified!

Beauty | Day | Love | Story | Beauty |

Eugen Herrigel

Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! he exclaimed. The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.

Aptitude | Awareness | Cult | Danger | Ego | Existence | Life | Life | Present | Reason | Right | Spirit | Success | Time | Witness | Worth | Talent | Danger | Awareness | Teacher |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

One may not give one's soul to a devil of hate — and remain forever scatheless.

Chance | Fame |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

I am guilty of believing that the human race can be humanized and enriched in every spiritual inference through the saner and more beneficent processes of peaceful persuasion applied to material problems rather than through wars, riots and bloodshed.

Appreciation | Capacity | Chance | Cunning | Enough | Nothing | Soul | Vision | World | Appreciation |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, and Samuel Beckett one -- and maybe a clone of that one. I have 10 or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The only absolute attainment is absolute abandonment.

Business | Will | Writing | Business |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

How stupid and shortsighted the ruling class really is! Cupidity is stone blind. It has no vision. The greedy, profit-seeking exploiter cannot see beyond the end of his nose. He can see a chance for an "opening"; he is cunning enough to know what graft is and where it is, and how it can be secured, but vision he has none — not the slightest. He knows nothing of the great throbbing world that spreads out in all directions. He has no capacity for literature; no appreciation of art; no soul for beauty. That is the penalty the parasites pay for the violation of the laws of life.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

An educated man must be bilingual.

Euripedes NULL

Doth someone say that there be gods above? There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool, led by the old false fable, thus deceive you. Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words no undue credence: for I say that kings kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud, and doing thus are happier than those who live calm pious lives day after day. All divinity is built-up from our good and evil luck.

Chance | Change | Rule |

Euripedes NULL

For silence and a chaste reserve is woman's genuine praise, and to remain quiet within the house.

Chance |

Eustace Budgell

Avoid disputes as much as possible. In order to appear easy and well-bred in conversation, you may assure yourself that it requires more wit, as well as more good humour, to improve than to contradict the notions of another: but if you are at any time obliged to enter on an argument, give your reasons with the utmost coolness and modesty, two things which scarce ever fail of making an impression on the hearers. Besides, if you are neither dogmatical, nor show either by your actions or words that you are full of yourself, all will the more heartily rejoice at your victory. Nay, should you be pinched in your argument, you may make your retreat with a very good grace. You were never positive, and are now glad to be better informed. This has made some approve the Socratic way of reasoning, where, while you scarce affirm anything, you can hardly be caught in an absurdity; and though possibly you are endeavouring to bring over another to your opinion, which is firmly fixed, you seem only to desire information from him.

Means | Thought | Thought |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?

Chance | Family | Impulse | Nature | People |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

The langor of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.

Chance | Heaven | Knowing | Man | Soul | World |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my seven children equally.

Chance | Heaven | Knowing | Little | Man | Nothing | Race | Soul | Survival | Vision | World |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.

Day | Heart | Music | Present |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.

Chance | Ideas | Man | People | Right | Intellect |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

Business | Family | Meaning | Will | Business |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

I could I trust starve like a gentleman. It's listed as part of the poetic training, you know.

Criticism | Work | Value |