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

Gustave Flaubert

Often, when they spoke of Paris, she would murmur: "Ah! How happy we'd be, living there!" "Aren't we happy here?" the young would softly ask, passing his hand over her hair.

Common Sense | Sense |

Gustave Flaubert

One ought to know everything, to write. All of us scribblers are monstrously ignorant. If only we weren?t lacking in stamina, what a rich field of ideas and similes we could tap! Books that have been the source of entire literatures, like Homer and Rabelais, contain the sum of all the knowledge of their times. They knew everything, those fellows, and we know nothing.

Giving | Life | Life | Training |

Gustave Flaubert

On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.

Sense |

Gustave Flaubert

When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women

Better | Life | Life | Plan | Time |

Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra

For me to rehearse with a children's orchestra a Mahler symphony was to really work. We had three or four weeks of rehearsal with the orchestra, every day eight or nine hours, putting the First together. I had been conducting Tchaikovsky a lot and Beethoven, but Mahler was different.

Life | Life | Little |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

If I had my way no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust or profit under the United States, and all female athletes would be shipped to the white-slave corrals of the Argentine.

Life | Life | People | Style |

Gustave Flaubert

There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one?s vanity?the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women.

Day | Fate | God | Hate | Life | Life | Nothing | Fate | God |

Gustave Flaubert

When all was over at the cemetery Charles returned to the house. There was no one downstairs. He went up into the bedroom and saw her dress hanging up at the foot of the bed. Then, leaning against the secretaire, he remained there till it was dark, lost in sorrowful meditation. After all, she had loved him.

Life | Life |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general.

Earth | Heart | Life | Life | Man | Smile | Will | Worth |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.

Beginning | Life | Life |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Happiness is peace after strife, the overcoming of difficulties, the feeling of security and well-being. The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

Sense |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

I believe in only one thing and that thing is human liberty. If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say. I am against any man and any organization which seeks to limit or deny that freedom? and the superior man can be sure of freedom only if it is given to all men.

Excitement | Sense |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

Death | Life | Life |

Gustave Flaubert

There is no truth except in its relation, that is to say, the fashion in which we perceive the objects.

Life | Life |

Gustavo Dudamel and the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra

I love to travel, but sometimes it's nice to stay in one place.

People | Sense |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

In any combat between a rogue and a fool the sympathy of mankind is always with the rogue.

Life | Life | Television |

Hans Rosling

You have to fit in sometimes to make people comfortable to listen to you.

Good | Life | Life |

Italian Proverbs

Of this world each man has as much as he takes.

Life | Life | Men |

Italian Proverbs

The eye of the master fattens the horse.

Experience | Life | Life | Principles | Psychology | Time | Youth | Youth |

Italian Proverbs

Much smoke, and little roast.

Life | Life | Television | World | Understand |