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 Shakespeare

Alas, why would you heap this care on me? I am unfit for state and majesty. I do beseech you take it not amiss, I cannot nor I will not yield to you. Richard III, Act iii, Scene 7

Passion |

William Shakespeare

A good heart is the sun and moon, or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps its course truly. King Henry V, Act v, Scene 2

Peace | Sorrow | Story | Will | Woe |

William Shakespeare

Ay, to the proof, as mountains are for winds, that shakes not, though they blow perpetually.

Kill | Men | Nothing | Sorrow |

William Shakespeare

And thus I clothe my naked villany with old odd ends, stol'n out of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (Gloucester at I, iii)

Argument | Courtesy | Love | Mourning | Sorrow | Friends |

William Shakespeare

Chain me with roaring bears; or shut me nightly in a charnel-house, o'er-covered quite with dead men's rattling bones, with reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; or bid me go into a new-made grave, and hide me with a dead man in his shroud; things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble; and I will do it without Fear or Doubt, to live an unstain'd Wife of my sweet Love. Romeo and Juliet, Act iv, Scene 1

Love | Passion | Reason | Wit |

William Shakespeare

Be stirring as the time, be fire with fire, threaten the threatener, and outface the brow of bragging horror; so shall inferior eyes, that borrow their behaviors from the great, grow great by your example and put on the dauntless spirit of resolution. The Life and Death of King John (Bastard at V, i)

Good | Sorrow | Will |

William Shakespeare

But come, I'll tell thee all my whole device When I am in my coach, which stays for us At the park gate; and therefore haste away, For we must measure twenty miles to-day. The Merchant of Venice (Portia at III, iv)

Joy | Sorrow |

William Shakespeare

DON PEDRO: To be merry best becomes you; for, out o' question, you were born in a merry hour. BEATRICE: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under than was I born. Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii, Scene 1

Comfort | Sorrow | World | Trouble | Happiness |

William Godwin

Liberty is one of the best of all sublunary advantages. I would willingly therefore communicate knowledge, without infringing, or with as little possible violence to, the volition and individual judgment of the person to be instructed.

Accident | Consideration | Contradiction | Control | Experiment | Father | Indulgence | Little | Man | Means | Mind | Nothing | Passion | Persuasion | Power | Trust | Will | Happiness |

William Godwin

Nor is there any reason to believe that sound conviction will be less permanent in its influence than sophistry and error.

Existence | Influence | Man | Men | Morality | Passion | Past | System | Teach | Thinking | Trust | Understanding | Will |

William James

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

Example | Experience | God | Men | Mysticism | Passion | Philosophy | Power | Soul | Unique | God |

William Mason

With what a heavy and retarding weight does expectation load the wing of time.

Avarice | Sorrow |

William McKinley

I have never been in doubt since I was old enough to think intelligently that I would someday be made President.

Grief | Heart | Inquiry | Security | Sorrow |

William James

The characteristics of the affective experience which, to avoid ambiguity, should, I think, be called the state of assurance rather than the faith-state, can be easily enumerated, though it is probably difficult to realize their intensity, unless one has been through the experience one's self.

Belief | Change | Passion | Peace | Salvation | Sense | Will | Loss |

William James

The practical consequence of such an individualistic philosophy is the well-known democratic respect for the sacredness of individuality,—is, at any rate, the outward tolerance of whatever is not itself intolerant. These phrases are so familiar that they sound now rather dead in our ears. Once they had a passionate inner meaning. Such a passionate inner meaning they may easily acquire again if the pretension of our nation to inflict its own inner ideals and institutions vi et armis upon Orientals should meet with a resistance as obdurate as so far it has been gallant and spirited. Religiously and philosophically, our ancient national doctrine of live and let live may prove to have a far deeper meaning than our people now seem to imagine it to possess.

Law | Passion | Religion | Spirit |

William James

Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task

Conquest | Love | Man | Passion | Work |

William Morris

April O fair mid-spring, besung so oft and oft, How can I praise thy loveliness enow? Thy sun that burns not, and thy breezes soft That o'er the blossoms of the orchard blow, The thousand things that 'neath the young leaves grow, The hopes and chances of the growing year, Winter forgotten long, and summer near. When summer brings the lily and the rose, She brings us fear-her very death she brings Hid in her anxious heart, the forge of woes; And, dull with fear, no more the mavis sings. But thou! thou diest not, but thy fresh life clings About the fainting autumn's sweet decay, When in the earth the hopeful seed they lay. Ah! life of all the year, why yet do I, Amid thy snowy blossoms' fragrant drift, Still long for that which never draweth nigh, Striving my pleasure from my pain to sift, Some weight from off my fluttering mirth to lift? - Now, when far bells are ringing Come again, Come back, past years! why will ye pass in vain?

Desire | Life | Life | Passion |

William Morris

O thrush, your song is passing sweet but never a song that you have sung,is half so sweet as thrushes sang when my dear Love and I were young.

Battle | Joy | Sorrow |

William Morris

Late February days; and now, at last, might you have thought that Winter's woe was past; so fair the sky was and so soft the air.

Hope | Love | Sorrow |

François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Absence lessens moderate passions and increases great ones; as the wind extinguishes the taper, but kindles the burning dwelling.

Passion |