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

Eugen Herrigel

The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure.

Right | Will | Learn | Think |

Eugen Drewermann

You see, my Lord Archbishop, what is "dubious" about my theology is not that it contradicts particular doctrinal teachings, things are much worse or better: what I want, is no more and no less than a fundamental change in the whole way that theology is done today; but I want this out of faith, not out of faithlessness.

Need | Right | Struggle | Superstition | Suspicion | Talking | Theology |

Eugene Peterson

All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.

Conversation | Hurry | Prayer | Sense | Work |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

The kind human gain much that that the virtue was less laborious.

Happiness |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future too.

Children | Experience | Wisdom | Old |

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 |

Ethiopian Proverbs

When one sets a portion for oneself, usually it is not too small.

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

When money represents so many things, not to love it would be to love nearly nothing. To forget true needs can be only a weak moderation; but to know the value of money and to sacrifice it always, maybe to duty, maybe even to delicacy,—that is real virtue.

Man | Woman |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

It is Mystery -- the mystery any one man or woman can feel but not understand as the meaning of any event -- or accident -- in any life on earth ... [that] I want to realize in the theatre. The solution, if there ever be any, will probably have to be produced in a test tube and turn out to be discouragingly undramatic.

Hell | Thinking |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

All men cannot connect their ideas with equal force, nor in equal number: and this is the reason why all are not equally happy in their imagination and memory.

Language |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

A man's work is in danger of deteriorating when he thinks he has found the one best formula for doing it. If he thinks that, he is likely to feel that all he needs is merely to go on repeating himself . . . so long as a person is searching for better ways of doing his work, he is fairly safe.

Absurd | Enough | Faith | Life | Life | Truth | Trial |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

It's not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I used to be able to summon up scenes at will, but now aging memory is so busy weeding its own garden that, promiscuously, it pulls up roses as well as crabgrass.

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

My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country.

Heart | Kill | Love | Past | Reading | Time |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Since nothing is free, to each his price.

Life | Life | Wrong |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The only absolute attainment is absolute abandonment.

Business | Will | Writing | Business |

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

This is, I say, the time for all good men not to go to the aid of their party, but to come to the aid of their country.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.

Men | Unique |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Well, remember, all that area from which the Gore family comes was solid Democrat and progressive under Roosevelt for several decades. So they just didn't become Republicans because they all wanted to be bankers. They became it because they didn't like black people, and they thought the Democrats were pushing integration too fast. And that's how the great split came about, to the shame of the whole country.

Plenty | Think |