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

Ethiopian Proverbs

Do not hesitate or you will be left in between doing something, having something and being nothing.

Blame | Giving | God | God |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

There is a Life Stream that flows to you, and this is a Stream of clarity, a Stream of wellness, a Stream of abundance - and in any moment, you are allowing it or not. What someone else does with the Stream, or not, does not have anything to do with how much of it will be left for you.

Emotions | Good | Guidance | Hope | Right | Thinking | Guidance | Happiness |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

When you are thinking of money in the way that will make it come to you, you always feel good. When you are thinking of money in the way that keeps it from coming to you, you always feel bad. That is how you know the difference.

Attention | Giving |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

Reach for a better feeling thought.

Future | Goals | Good |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

Who you really are is Non-Physical Energy focused in a physical body, knowing full well that all is well and always has been, and always will be. You are here to experience the supreme pleasure of concluding new desires, and then of bringing yourself into vibrational alignment with the new desires that you've concluded, for the purpose of taking thought beyond that which it has been before.

Good | Important | Nothing | Reason | Will |

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

And the great question for mankind is what is to be loved or hated next, whenever and old love or fear has lost its hold.

Day | Need | Practice | Question | Time | Teacher |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

So we must try to distinguish between two questions that are often confused in this discussion. Is the existence of God a truth demonstrable by natural reason, so that it is knowable and known with certitude? Without a doubt the answer to this first question is “yes.” The second question is whether everyone can consider his natural reason infallible in its effort to demonstrate rationally the existence of God? The merciless criticism of the proofs of St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Descartes, Malebranche and many others are timely reminders of the need for modesty. Are we keener philosophers than they? That is the whole question. Modesty is not skepticism. So we should not be afraid to let our mind pursue the proof of God’s existence until we reach the greatest possible certitude, but we should keep intact our faith in the word that reveals this truth to the most simple folk as well as to the most learned. Here it is well to meditate on the very complex and nuanced passage in ST 2-2.2.4: “Is it necessary to believe what can be proved by natural reason?” The answer is in the affirmative: “We must accept by faith not only what is above reason but also what can be known by reason.”

Beginning | Body | Experience | Giving | Life | Life | Looks | Philosophy | Wisdom | Learn |

Eugene Peterson

You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.

Guidance | Habit | Need | Time | Understanding | Wisdom | Guidance |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

I distinguish three sorts of signs: 1. Accidental signs, or the objects which particular circumstances have connected with some of our ideas, so as to render the one proper to revive the other. 2. Natural signs, or the cries which nature has established to express the passions of joy, of fear, or of grief, 3. Instituted signs, or those which we have chosen ourselves, and bear only an arbitrary relation to our ideas.

Distinction | Distinguish | Experience | Impression | Play | Rest |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

These two arts associated themselves with that of gesture, their elder sister, and known by the name of Dance. From whence there is reason to conjecture, that some kind of dance, and some kind of music and poetry, might have been observed at all times, and in all nations.

Attention | Giving | Order |

Eudora Welty

She read Dickens in the same spirit she would have eloped with him.

Eugene Peterson

If a pastor is not in touch with joy, it will be difficult to preach or teach convincingly that the news is good.

Excellence | Excellence |

Eudora Welty

When my mother would tell me that she wanted me to have something because she as a child had never had it, I wanted, or I partly wanted, to give it back. All my life I continued to feel that bliss for me would have to imply my mother's deprivation or sacrifice. I don't think it would have occurred to her what a double emotion I felt, and indeed I know that it was being unfair to her, for what she said was simply the truth.

Abundance | Honesty | Need | Crisis |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I am an obsessive rewriter, doing one draft and then another and another, usually five. In a way, I have nothing to say, but a great deal to add.

Heart |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.

Care | Life | Life | People | Public | World |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?

Plan |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Foolish and vain indeed is the workingman who makes the color of his skin the stepping-stone to his imaginary superiority. The trouble is with his head, and if he can get that right he will find that what ails him is not superiority but inferiority, and that he, as well as the Negro he despises, is the victim of wage-slavery, which robs him of what he produces and keeps both him and the Negro tied down to the dead level of ignorance and degradation.

Struggle | Friends |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

In general. . . novel-theorists have nothing very urgent or interesting to say about literature. Why then do they write when they have nothing to say? Because the ambitious teacher can only rise in the academic bureaucracy by writing at complicated length about writing that has already been much written about. The result of all this book-chat cannot interest anyone who knows literature while those who would like to learn something about books can only be mystified and discouraged by these commentaries.

Experiment | Revolution | Writing |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.

Giving | Knowing |