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

The one who is mistaken is the one who does nothing.

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

There were two reasons why persons of any abilities, that attempted this kind of music, could not help meeting with success. The first is, that without doubt they pitched upon such pieces, as in the course of reciting, they had been accustomed to render particularly expressive; or at least they imagined some such. The second is the surprise, which this music must needs have produced by its novelty. The greater the surprise she greater the impression of the music.

Attention | Circumstances | Object |

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 |

Eugene Peterson

Forgiveness is the last word. I take no interest in eliminating the tension between justice and forgiveness by taking justice off the table.

Attention | Focus | People | Will | World | Wrong |

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

Little Bush says we are at war, but we are not at war because to beat war Congress has to vote for it. He says we are at war on terror,but that is a metaphor, though I doubt if he knows what that means.It's like having a war on dandruff, it's endless and pointless.

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 |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).

Darkness | Death | Defeat | Earth | Failure | Hope | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mystery | Nothing | Power | Reading | Sadness | Will | Failure |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.

Attention | Mind | Writing |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class.

Good | Health | Rule | Will | Old |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority.

Freedom | Greed | Price | Self-love | Words |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I wanted to be a politician and a movie star. But I was born a writer. If you're born that, you can't change it. You're going to do it whether you want to or not.

Memory |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.

Age | Attention | Land | Order | Past |