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

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

Chance | Enough | Knowing | Thinking | Time | World | Think |

Ethiopian Proverbs

The eye of the leopard is on the goat, and the eye of the goat is on the leaf.

Eudora Welty

All experience is an enrichment rather than an impoverishment.

Beauty | Pity | Power | Beauty |

Eugenio Montale

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Question | Taste | Time |

Eugenio Montale

Evidently the arts, all the visual arts, are becoming more democratic in the worst sense of the word.

Care | Man | Soul | Words |

Evan Esar

A husband may forget where he went on his honeymoon, but he never forgets why.

Husband |

Felix Adler

The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. They become particularly important in times of trouble. They are like the life-boats carried by ocean ships. As long as the sea is smooth and there is every appearance of a prosperous voyage, the passengers seldom take note of the boats or inquire into their sea-worthiness. But when the storm breaks and danger approaches, then the capacity of the boats and their soundness become matters of the first importance.

Society | Society |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters.

Italian Proverbs

Poor men do penance for rich men's sins.

Experience | Openness | People | Personality | Safe |

Italian Proverbs

People in glass houses should not throw stones.

Personality | Will |

Italian Proverbs

Where god has a church the devil will have his chapel.

People | Personality |

Italian Proverbs

When house and land are gone and spent, then learning is most excellent.

Childhood | People | Personality |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

It had the old double keyboard, an entirely different set of keys for capitals and figures, so that the paper seemed a long way off, and the machine was as big and solid as a battle cruiser. Typing was then a muscular activity. You could ache after it. If you were not familiar with those vast keyboards, your hand wandered over them like a child lost in a wood. The noise might have been that of a shipyard on the Clyde. You would no more have thought of carrying one of those grim structures as you would have thought of travelling with a piano.

Bible | God | Means | Personality | God | Bible |