Great Throughts Treasury

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

Understand

"No day in which you learn something is a complete loss." - Italian Proverbs

"Penny and penny laid up will be many." - Italian Proverbs

"People get the government they deserve." - Italian Proverbs

"Rain on the day you get married brings good luck." - Italian Proverbs

"Skill or fortune will efface the spots." - Italian Proverbs

"The best advice one can give to the hungry is bread." - Italian Proverbs

"The fruit of a good tree is also good." - Italian Proverbs

"The poor is hated by his neighbor, but the rich hath many friends." - Italian Proverbs

"There is never enough where nought is left." - Italian Proverbs

"When the danger is past God is cheated." - Italian Proverbs

"A lot of men who have accepted - or had imposed upon them in boyhood - the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

"The time has gone by when a Huxley could believe that while science might indeed remold traditional mythology, traditional morals were impregnable and sacrosanct to it. We must learn not to take traditional morals too seriously. And it is just because even the least dogmatic of religions tends to associate itself with some kind of unalterable moral tradition, that there can be no truce between science and religion." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

"And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed, while others reap and sow in his stead." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"But I am the real Strider, fortunately. I am Aragorn son of Arathorn; and if by life or death I can save you, I will." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes? Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel-blade, fair yet terrible. A swift stroke she dealt, skilled and deadly. The outstretched neck she clove asunder, and the hewn head fell like a stone. Backward she sprang as the huge shape crashed to ruin, vast wings outspread, crumpled on the earth; and with its fall the shadow passed away. A light fell about her, and her hair shone in the sunrise." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Child of the kindly West, I have come to know, if more of us valued your ways - food and cheer above hoarded gold - it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"I should say that, in addition to my tree-love (it was originally called The Tree), it arose from my own pre-occupation with the Lord of the Rings, the knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be 'not at all'. The war had arisen to darken all horizons. But no such analyses are a complete explanation even of a short story..." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger; someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them..." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien