Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Books

"I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home." - Thomas Merton

"Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage." - Thomas Merton

"The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself: for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order, of union with God, the principle of all perfection" - Thomas Merton

"There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular- and too lazy to think of anything better." - Thomas Merton

"The book called the Bible has been voted by men, and decreed by human laws to be the word of God; and the disbelief of this is called blasphemy." - Thomas Paine

"These people are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend ; their property is open to anyone who has the courage to attack them... The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like law, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. Horrid mischief would ensue were one-half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong." - Thomas Paine

"The babbling sounds that mimic echo plays, The fairy shade, and its eternal maze? Nature and Art in all their charms combin'd, And all Elysium to one view confin'd! " - Thomas Tickell

"If I were king, my pipe should be premier. The skies of time and chance are seldom clear, We would inform them all with bland blue weather. Delight alone would need to shed a tear, For dream and deed should war no more together. Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear; Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather; And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere, If I were king. But politics should find no harbour near; The Philistine should fear to slip his tether; Tobacco should be duty free, and beer; In fact, in room of this, the age of leather, An age of gold all radiant should appear, If I were king." - William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley

"Morning glow, morning glow, For my death thou gleamest so; Soon the trumpet will be blowing, Unto death I must be going, I and many comrades too. Ere we’ve thought, ere we’ve thought, Joy unto an end is brought. Yesterday on proud steeds flying, Shot to-day, in anguish lying, And to-morrow in the grave. Soon, alas, soon, alas, Strength and beauty have to pass. Though in youthful pride thou glowest, Cheeks so fair and ruddy showest: Ah, the roses all must fade! To what end, to what end Doth man’s joy and cunning tend? Under care and sorrow bending, He must follow toil unending E’en from morning until night. So be still, so be still! I will yield to God’s own will, Fight with spirit when they call me, And if death should soon befall me, Then there dies a rider brave." - Wilhelm Hauff

"If Humility is Christianity, you, O Jews! are the true Christians. If your tradition that Man contained in his limbs all animals is true, and they were separated from him by cruel sacrifices, and when compulsory cruel sacrifices had brought Humanity into a Feminine Tabernacle in the loins of Abraham and David, the Lamb of God, the Saviour, became apparent on Earth as the Prophets had fore-told! The return of Israel is a return to mental sacrifice and war. " - William Blake

"A Song : On The Green Margin - On the green margin of the brook, Despairing Phyllida reclined, Whilst every sigh, and every look, Declared the anguish of her mind. Am I less lovely then? (she cries, And in the waves her form surveyed); Oh yes, I see my languid eyes, My faded cheek, my colour fled: These eyes no more like lightning pierced, These cheeks grew pale, when Damon first His Phyllida betrayed. The rose he in his bosom wore, How oft upon my breast was seen! And when I kissed the drooping flower, Behold, he cried, it blooms again! The wreaths that bound my braided hair, Himself next day was proud to wear At church, or on the green. While thus sad Phyllida lamented, Chance brought unlucky Thyrsis on; Unwillingly the nymph consented, But Damon first the cheat begun. She wiped the fallen tears away, Then sighed and blushed, as who would say Ah! Thyrsis, I am won. " - William Cowper

"Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years—generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco—and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad—ROBINSON CRUSOE. When I want advice—ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much—ROBINSON CRUSOE. I have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my service. On my lady's last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and ROBINSON CRUSOE put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"I've found that inspiration is the spark which starts the engine of creativity. Be aware, sensitive, and alert to inspiration, and when it comes put it to work. Keep your spiritual antenna reaching for inspiration, for nothing great was ever accomplished without it." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

"Honest pioneer work in the field of science has always been, and will continue to be, life’s pilot. On all sides, life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation." - Wilhelm Reich

"Religion, with its metaphysical error of absolute guilt, dominated the broadest, the cosmic realm. From there, it infiltrated the subordinate realms of biological, social and moral existence with its errors of the absolute and inherited guilt. Humanity, split up into millions of factions, groups, nations and states, lacerated itself with mutual accusations. The Greeks are to blame, the Romans said, and The Romans are to blame, the Greeks said. So they warred against one another. The ancient Jewish priests are to blame, the early Christians shouted. The Christians have preached the wrong Messiah, the Jews shouted and crucified the harmless Jesus. The Muslims and Turks and Huns are guilty, the crusaders screamed. The witches and heretics are to blame, the later Christians howled for centuries, murdering, hanging, torturing and burning heretics. It remains to investigate the sources from which the Jesus legend derives its grandeur, emotional power and perseverance. Let us continue to stay outside this St. Vitus dance. The longer we look around, the crazier it seems. Hundreds of minor patriarchs, self-proclaimed kings and princes, accused one another of this or that sin and made war, scorched the land, brought famine and epidemics to the populations. Later, this became known as history. And the historians did not doubt the rationality of this history. Gradually the common people appeared on the scene. The Queen is to blame, the people's representatives shouted, and beheaded the Queen. Howling, the populace danced around the guillotine. From the ranks of the people arose Napoleon. The Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians are to blame, it was now said. Napoleon is to blame, came the reply. The machines are to blame! the weavers screamed, and The lumpen proletariat is to blame, sounded back. The Monarchy is to blame, long live the Constitution! the burgers shouted. The middle classes and the Constitution are to blame; wipe them out; long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the proletarian dictators shout, and The Russians are to blame, is hurled back. Germany is to blame, the Japanese and the Italians shouted in 1915. England is to blame, the fathers of the proletarians shouted in 1939. And Germany is to blame, the self-same fathers shouted in 1942. Italy, Germany and Japan are to blame, it was said in 1940. It is only by keeping strictly outside this inferno that one can be amazed that the human animal continues to shriek Guilty! without doubting its own sanity, without even once asking about the origin of this guilt. Such mass psychoses have an origin and a function. Only human beings who are forced to hide something catastrophic are capable of erring so consistently and punishing so relentlessly any attempt at clarifying such errors." - Wilhelm Reich

"Under the influence of politicians, masses of people tend to ascribe the responsibility for wars to those who wield power at any given time. In World War I it was the munitions industrialists; in World War II it was the psychopathic generals who were said to be guilty. This is passing the buck. The responsibility for war falls solely upon the shoulders of these same masses of people, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands. In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anybody else. To stress this guilt on the part of masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims, means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom-fighters; the latter the attitude held by the power-thirsty politicians." - Wilhelm Reich

"There's a great big beautiful tomorrow, just a dream away." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

"The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights -- the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others." - Walter Bagehot

"Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion." - Walter Lippmann

"Everybody today, it seems, wants to reform education. It would be interesting if this ambition were a mark of our times. But it is not, for an ambition to reform education is found in most of the ages known to civilization." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

"Sight isolates, sound incorporates. Whereas sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

"When he hung over the death-bed of his infant son Ibrahim, resignation to the Will of God was exhibited in his conduct under this keenest of afflictions; and the hope of soon rejoining his child in paradise was his consolation. When he followed him to the grave, he invoked his spirit, in the awful examination of the tomb, to hold fast to the foundations of the faith, the Unity of God, and his own mission as a Prophet." - Washington Irving

"Beauty, midnight, vision dies: let the winds of dawn that blow softly round your dreaming head. Such a day of welcome show eye and knocking heart may bless, find our mortal world enough; noons of dryness find you fed by the involuntary powers, nights of insult let you pass watched by every human love." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior; what he says and does must be admired." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"There is always a certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life; for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called for." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

"Why was his hair tinted with gold? An evil omen was golden hair in my life. Why had not the brown of his eyes crushed out and killed the blue? — for brown were his father’s eyes, and his father’s father’s. And thus in the Land of the Color-line I saw, as it fell across my baby, the shadow of the Veil." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

"Day after day, throughout the winter, we hardened ourselves to live by bluest reason in a world of wind and frost." - Wallace Stevens

"Bodies which contain a greater proportion of water than is necessary to balance the other elements, are speedily corrupted, and lose their virtues and properties." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"If nature has composed the human body so that in its proportions the separate individual elements answer to the total form, then the Ancients seem to have had reason to decide that bringing their creations to full completion likewise required a correspondence between the measure of individual elements and the appearance of the work as a whole." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss. Poems that take a thousand years to die. But ape the immortality of this red label on a little butterfly." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Math anxiety: an intense lifelong fear of two trains approaching each other at speeds of 60 and 80 MPH." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"The answer to all questions of life and death, the absolute solution was written all over the world he had known: it was like a traveler realizing that the wild country he surveys is not an accidental assembly of natural phenomena, but the page in a book where these mountains and forests, and fields, and rivers are disposed in such a way as to form a coherent sentence; the vowel of a lake fusing with the consonant of a sibilant slope; the windings of a road writing its message in a round hand, as clear as that of one's father; trees conversing in dumb-show, making sense to one who has learnt the gestures of their language... Thus the traveler spells the landscape and its sense is disclosed, and likewise, the intricate pattern of human life turns out to be monogrammatic, now quite clear to the inner eye disentangling the interwoven letters. And the word, the meaning which appears is astounding in its simplicity: the greatest surprise being perhaps that in the course of one's earthly existence, with one's brain encompassed by an iron ring, by the close-fitting dream of one's own personality - one had not made by chance that simple mental jerk, which would have set free imprisoned thought and granted it the great understanding." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"The compensation for a death sentence is knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"There is an old American saying 'He who lives in a glass house should not try to kill two birds with one stone." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"I know of no great men except those who have rendered great service to the human race." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Originality is nothing by judicious imitation (plagiarism). The most original writers borrowed one from another." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"The interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"The only reward to be expected from the cultivation of literature is contempt if one fails and and hatred if one succeeds." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"What will the preachers say?... To teach men not to persecute men: for, while a few sanctimonious humbugs are burning a few fanatics, the earth opens and swallows up all alike." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"You must have the devil in you to succeed in any of the arts." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"It isn't an easy job to paint oneself – at any rate if it is to be different from a photograph. And you see – this, in my opinion, is the advantage that impressionism possesses over all the other things; it is not banal, and one seeks after a deeper resemblance than the photograph." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Does Nature supplement what man advanced? Or does she complete what he began?" - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"For genius like Shakespeare's is not born among laboring, uneducated servile people. I was not born in England among the Saxons and the Britons. I was is not born today among the working classes. How, then, could it have been born among women whose began, according to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery , who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power of law and custom? Yet, genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working classes." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf