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

All my life, I have lived with the feeling that I have been kept from my true place. If the expression "metaphysical exile" had no meaning, my existence alone would afford it one.

Looks | Nothing | People |

Dorothy Parker

I'll think about something else. I'll just sit quietly. If I could sit still. If I could sit still, maybe I could read. Oh, all the books are about people who love each other, truly and sweetly. What do they want to write about that for? Don't they know it isn't true? Don't they know it's a lie, it's a God-damned lie? What do they have to tell about that for, when they know how it hurts?

Love | People |

Elyn Saks

We must stop criminalizing mental illness. It's a national tragedy and scandal that the L.A. County Jail is the biggest psychiatric facility in the United States.

Important | People | Sense | Work | Friends |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

So far any one shuns evils, so far as he does good.

Angels | Bible | Earth | Heaven | Meaning | People | Understanding | Wisdom | Bible |

Elyn Saks

Occupying my mind with complex problems has been my best and most powerful and most reliable defense against my mental illness.

Family | Law | Nothing | People | Public | Safe | Stigma | Work | Friends |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

The Lord withdraws no one from their hell unless they see that they are in hell and wish to be led out.

God | People | God |

Dorothy Parker

God, the bitter misery that reading works into this world! Everybody knows that - everbody who IS everybody. All the best minds have been off reading for years. Look at the swing La Rouchefoucauld took at it. He said that if nobody had ever learned to read, very few people would be in love. Good for you, La Rouchefoucauld; nice going, boy. I wish I’d never learned to read.

Harm | People |

Dorothy Parker

I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that anymore.

Books | Love | People | Think |

Dorothy Parker

Oh, both my shoes are shiny new, and pristine is my hat my dress is 1922… My life is all like that.

Better | Good | Heart | Looks | People | Think |

Elyn Saks

There are lots of misconceptions about schizophrenia, [like that] patients are truly wild. In fact, of all the major mental illnesses, they're the least violent. People can't hold jobs, certainly not high-powered jobs...Can't have close friends and family. Can't live independently. A lot of those have some truth; they're true of a certain portion of people with schizophrenia. But it seems to me that a lot more than is now the case could be leading far more gratifying [lives]. When you tell someone, 'you're not going to be able to work,' or 'scale down your expectations,' then they do. And yet work gives most people so much of a sense of well-being, productivity. You're taking away from someone a thing that could be an important tool in their recovery by having these kind of negative expectations.

People |

Elyn Saks

Portray [people with mental illness] sympathetically, and portray them in all the richness and depth of their experience as people, and not as diagnoses.

People |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man.

Abundance | Body | Conversation | Eternal | Experience | Life | Life | Means | Meditation | Money | Need | People | Reading | Spirit | Time | World | Think | Understand |

Dorothy Parker

I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see.

Better | Character | Little | People | Reading | Story | Study | Work | Think |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

Moreover, no one is judged from the natural man, thus not so long as he lives in the natural world, for man is then in a natural body; but everyone is judged in the spiritual man, and therefore when he comes into the spiritual world, for man is then in a spiritual body.

Life | Life | Opinion | People | Regard | World |

Emil M. Cioran

A phantom cannot be cured, still less an enlightened mind. We can only cure those who belong to the earth and still have their roots in it, however superficial.

Ideas | People | Theories |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

Withdrawal from evil is effected by the Lord in a thousand most secret ways.

Body | Death | Individual | Meaning | Means | Nature | People | Spirit | Thought | World | Thought |

Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg

The Lord’s church is spread over the whole globe, and so is universal. All who live a good life according to their own religious belief are members of it. Heaven is of such a nature that all who have lived well, of whatever religion, have a place there.

Love | Means | People | Present |

Emile Zola

These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here.

Deliberation | Little | People | Soul | World | Deliberation |

Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson

How dreary — to be — Somebody! How public — like a Frog — to tell one's name — the livelong June -To an admiring Bog.

People | Strength |

Emile Zola

In making these accusations I am aware that I am making myself liable to articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29 July 1881 regarding the press, which make libel a punishable offence. I expose myself to that risk voluntarily.

Love | People | Speculation | World | Think |