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

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute

Silence | World |

Vimala Thakar

We are suffering throughout the world in the darkness of the misery we have created. By believing in the fragmentary and the superficial, we have failed to live together in peace and harmony, and so darkness looms very large on the horizon. It’s in such darkness that common people such as you and I feel the urgency to go deeper, to abandon superficial approaches that are inadequate and to activate the creative forces available to each of us as expressions of wholeness. The vast intelligence that orders the cosmos is available to all. The beauty of life, the wonder of living, is that we share creativity, intelligence, and unlimited potential with the rest of the cosmos. If the universe is vast and mysterious, we are vast and mysterious. If it contains innumerable creative energies, we contain innumerable creative energies. If it has healing energies, we also have healing energies. To realize that we are not simply physical beings on a material planet, but that we are whole beings, each a miniature cosmos, each related to all of life in intimate, profound ways, should radically transform how we perceive ourselves, our environments, our social problems. Nothing can ever be isolated from wholeness.

Action | Enough | Fear | Superiority |

Virginia Satir

Our biggest problem as human beings is not knowing that we don't know.

World |

Václav Havel

The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.

Important | Man | Work |

Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban

These four qualifications characterize the greatest virtue of a woman. No woman can afford to be without them. In fact they are very easy to possess if a woman only treasure them in her heart. The ancients had a saying: "Is love afar off? If I desire love, then love is at hand!" So can it be said of these qualifications.

Heaven | Honor | Husband | Important | Individual | Man | Wife | Yielding |

Elizabeth Gilbert

For you, I am even willing to suffer. Whatever pain happens to us in the future, I accept it already, just for the pleasure of being with you now. Let’s enjoy this time. It’s marvelous.

History | Love | Regard | Risk | Waiting | Victim |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I told him: Maybe you could come to visit me in America someday, Ketut. Navia and shook his head cheerfully resigned to capacity: I cannot Liz, I do not have enough teeth to travel by plane

Absolution | Children | Clemency | Pain | People | Thought | Words | Friends | Thought |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Oh Krishna's mind concern, rough, strong and stubborn, and subjected to at least the difficulty of for subjecting the wind

Absolution | Business | Children | Clemency | Pain | People | Right | Thought | Words | Business | Friends | Thought |

Ellen Goodman

The people often slandered as greedy geezers seem to have a perspective from their place in history. The elders in my family remember the Depression. The baby boomers remember dot-com boom and bust. We all have albums of best laid plans.

Feelings | Regard | Regret |

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: ''Checkout Time is 18 years.''

Laughter | Life | Life | Thinking |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

It might be said that energy is for the mechanical world what consciousness is for the human world. If energy fails, everything fails.

Men |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

In other words, everybody claims to achieve freedom by his own "system" and accuses every other "system" as inevitably entailing tyranny, totalitarianism, or anarchy leading to both.

Labor | Purpose | Purpose |

Esther Perel

Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.

Sense | Wonder |

Eugene Peterson

When we see the other as GodÂ’s anointed, a priest to us, our relationships are profoundly affected.

Eugen Herrigel

This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose.

Aims | Art | Awareness | Experience | Individual | Meaning | Means | Mind | Nothing | Power | Practice | Present | Reflection | Spirit | Work | Art | Awareness |

Eugene Peterson

All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.

Conversation | Hurry | Prayer | Sense | Work |

Eugene Peterson

When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn't go off and leave us- he enters into our trouble and saves us.

Italian Proverbs

Teeth placed in front of the tongue give good advice.

System |

Italian Proverbs

She who is born a beauty is born betrothed.

Italian Proverbs

There is no rule without an exception.

People | Work | Think |