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

Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost forever; Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last. We rest. -- A dream has power to poison sleep; We rise. -- One wandering thought pollutes the day; We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep; Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away: It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free: Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.

Darkness | Joy | Power | Thought | Thought |

Persian Proverbs

It is a wise man who can laugh at his own jokes.

Man | Wise |

Pierre Beaumarchais, fully Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

I quickly laugh at everything for fear of having to cry.

Fear |

Rosamunde Pilcher, also pen name Jane Fraser

Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word it always was. Let it be spoken without effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well.

Absolute | Death | Life | Life | Little | Means | Mind | Nothing | Waiting | Old | Think |

Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL

A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue. [A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.]

Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury

A single face turned upward toward all Time. One flesh, one ecstasy, one peace. I am the dreamer and the doer. I the hearer and the knower, I the giver and the taker, I the sword and the wound of sword. If this be true, then let sword fall free from hand. I embrace myself. I laugh until I weep. And weep until I smile.

Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury

That so much time was wasted in this pain. Ten thousand years ago he might have let off down To not return again! A dreadful laugh at last escapes his lips; The laughter sets him free. A Fool lives in the Universe! he cries. The Fool is me! And with one final shake of laughter Breaks his bonds

Laughter | Time |

Red Skelton, fully Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton

Today's comics use four-letter words as a shortcut to thinking. They're shooting for that big laugh and it becomes a panic thing, using four-letter words to shock people.

Panic | Words |

Red Skelton, fully Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton

Live by this credo: have a little laugh at life and look around you for happiness instead of sadness. Laughter has always brought me out of unhappy situations.

Laughter | Life | Life | Little | Happiness |

Red Skelton, fully Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton

I live by this credo: Have a little laugh at life and look around you for happiness instead of sadness. Laughter had always brought me out of unhappy situations. Even in your darkest moment, you usually can find something to laugh about if you try hard enough.

Laughter | Life | Life | Little | Happiness |

Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL

In Buddhism there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.

Nothing | Will | Wise |

Robertson Davies

Foolish people laugh at those readers a century ago who wept over the novels of Dickens. Is it a sign of superior intellect to read anything and everything unmoved, in a grey, unfeeling Limbo?

Novels | People | Intellect |

Robertson Davies

Our fate lies in your hands, to you we pray For an indulgent hearing of our play; Laugh if you can, or failing that, give vent In hissing fury to your discontent; Applause we crave, from scorn we take defense But have no armor 'gainst indifference.

Applause | Defense | Fate | Fury | Fate |

Robertson Davies

They live and laugh who know the better part

Better |

Robert Browning

To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, and, baffled, get up and begin again.

Robert Browning

But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, to dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, and baffled, get up and begin again.

Purpose | Purpose |

Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

O Lord, who shall requite Thy goodness? For Thou hast placed the soul in the body to vivify it, And to teach and show it the path of life And to deliver it from evil; Thou hast formed man from a pinch of clay and breathed into him a soul, And didst impart to him the spirit of wisdom Whereby man is divided from the beasts That he may ascend to a higher sphere. Thou hast him enclosed in Thy universe, And directest and beholdest his deeds from without, And all that would conceal him from Thee Thou beholdest from within and without.

Knowledge | Nature | Power | Punishment | Soul | Space | Wisdom |