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

William Havard

Appearances deceive and this one maxim is a standing rule: men are not what they seem.

Books | God | Mind | Opportunity | God |

William Godwin

The cause of justice is the cause of humanity. Its advocates should overflow with universal good will. We should love this cause, for it conduces to the general happiness of mankind.

Business | Enemy | Government | Man | Mind | Reason | Society | Wise | Society | Government | Business | Old |

William Gouge

They who on meare curiositie (where no urgent necessitie requireth) try whether their children may not as birds be nourished without sucking, offend contrary to this dutie of breast feeding and reflect that meanes which God hath ordained as best; and so oppose their shallow wits to his unsearchable wisdom.

Mind | Present | Time |

William James

Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.

Belief | Duty | Mind | Power | World |

William James

Old age has the last word: the purely naturalistic look at life, however enthusiastically it may begin, is sure to end in sadness. . . . This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy.

Force | Individual | Strength | Time |

William James

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second. Give your dreams all you've got and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.

Habit | Little | Man | People |

William Harvey

Very many maintain that all we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown.

Health | Mind |

William James

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

Change | Education | Mind | Need | Science | Sin | Struggle |

William Law

We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.

Age | Association | Example | Heart | History | Human nature | Liberty | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Nature | Nothing | Regard | Association | Think |

William Morris

A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works.

Force | Giving | Good | Self | Sense |

William James

So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top.

Discipline | Force | War |

William James

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

Absolute | Body | Conscience | Consciousness | Education | Energy | God | Heaven | Life | Life | Meaning | Miracles | Present | Religion | Science | World | God | Think |

William James

We need only in cold blood to act as if the thing in question were real and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real.

Habit | Initiative | Life | Life | Mind | Will |

William Law

Now since our eternal state is as certainly ours, as our present state; since we are as certainly to live forever, as we now live at all; it is plain, that we cannot judge of the value of any particular time, as to us, but by comparing it to that eternal duration, for which we are created.

Blame | Care | Earnestness | God | Love | Man | Men | Mind | Nothing | Spirit | Wise | God |

William Matthews

What lasting progress was ever made in social reformation, except when every step was insured by appeals to the understanding and the will?

Contempt | Forethought | Love | Man | Mind | Present | Qualities | Riches | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Wrong | Riches | Thought |

William James

We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.

Consciousness | Mind | Suppression |

William James

The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.

Mind | Teacher |

William Law

The pure, mere love of God is that alone from which sinners are justly to expect that no sin will pass unpunished, but that His love will visit them with every calamity and distress that can help to break and purify the bestial heart of man and awaken in him true repentance and conversion to God. It is love alone in the holy Deity that will allow no peace to the wicked, nor ever cease its judgments till every sinner is forced to confess that it is good for him that he has been in trouble, and thankfully own that not the wrath but the love of God has plucked out that right eye, cut off that right band, which he ought to have done but would not do for himself and his own salvation.

Agony | Body | Death | Eternal | Force | Man | Mortal | Progress | Reality |

William Morris

A pattern is either right or wrong.... It is no stronger than its weakest point.

Imagination | Man | Memory | Mind | Soul | Will | Wills |

William James

The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.

Mind | Study | Words |