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

Dorothy Parker

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.

Vice |

Emile Zola

He loved her body so far. Now head began to love.

Extreme | Nothing | Old | Vice |

Emil M. Cioran

What is that one crucifixion compared to the daily kind any insomniac endures?

Pity | Vice |

Emile Zola

Angelique, with both hands open, lying limply on her knees, was giving herself. And Felicien remembered the evening on which she had run barefoot through the grass, so adorable that he had pursued her, and whispered in her ear, I love you. And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, I love you. And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, I love you, the eternal cry that had finally emerged from her wide-open heart. I love you... Take me, carry me away, I am yours.

Care | Cause | Crime | Day | Disgrace | Earth | Exploit | God | Important | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Nature | Pain | Suffering | Tears | World | God | Vice |

Emile Zola

The Esterhazy affair, thus, Mr. President, comes down to this: a guilty man is being passed off as innocent. For almost two months we have been following this nasty business hour by hour. I am being brief, for this is but the abridged version of a story whose sordid pages will some day be written out in full.

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out.

Depression | Life | Life | Mourning | Music | Vice |

Ernest Becker

Civilized society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this sense everything that man does is religious and heroic, and yet in danger of being fictitious and fallible.

Man | Normality | People | Reality | Time | Wants | Vice |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I was blown up while we were eating cheese.

Danger | Disease | Fear | Man | Men | Stupidity | Time | Danger | Afraid | Vice |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

One battle doesn't make a campaign but critics treat one book, good or bad, like a whole goddamn war.

Death | Pleasure | Writing | Vice |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

On Jack Kennedy: [He was] very, very funny....He was droll about himself. God knows he was droll about the family. He saw through them all, including Bobby....He should have been a journalist. In fact, he would have been a very good one, a gossip columnist. He knew who was f--king everyone on earth at every given moment. He had an absolute passion to know those details.

Commerce | Commerce |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.

Money | Vice |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

Commerce | Commerce |

Italian Proverbs

Take heed of enemies reconciled and of meat twice boiled.

Power | Revolution | Will | World |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

And so Gollum found them hours later, when he returned, crawling and creeping down the path out of the gloom ahead. Sam sat propped against the stone, his head dropping sideways and his breathing heavy. In his lap lay Frodo's head, drowned in sleep; upon his white forehead lay one of Sam's brown hands, and the other lay softly upon his master's breast. Peace was in both their faces. Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee--but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.

Entertainment | Need | Will | Think | Vice |