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

Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen

Beauty is commonly a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.

Accomplishment | Force | Man | Taste |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

It is... particularly true of constitutional government that its atmosphere is opinion... It does not remain fixed in any unchanging form, but grows with the growth and is altered with the change of the nation's needs and purposes.

Despise | Learning | Seclusion | Society | Study | Society |

Hugh Blair

If you delay till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day, you overcharge the morrow with a burden which belongs not to it. You load the wheels of time, and prevent it from carrying you along smoothly. He who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows out the plan, carries on a thread which will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light which darts itself through all his affairs. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, all things lie huddled together in one chaos, which admits neither of distribution nor review.

Improvement | Mind | Taste | Virtue | Virtue | Will |

Timothy Dwight, fully Timothy Dwight IV

What must be the knowledge of Him, from whom all created minds have derived both their power of knowledge, and the innumerable objects of their knowledge! What must be the wisdom of Him, from whom all things derive their wisdom!

Education | Existence | Government | Industry | Learning | Man | Marriage | Refinement | World | Government |

Hugh Blair

Though Milton is most distinguished for his sublimity, yet there is also much of the beautiful, the tender, and the pleasing in many parts of his work.

Giving | Good | Improvement | Sensibility | Taste |

Hugh Blair

The discipline which corrects the baseness of worldly passions, fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes it with enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity, than all the provisions we can make of the goods of fortune.

Beauty | Genius | Good | Little | Mind | Power | Rest | Sensibility | Taste | Words | Beauty |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

Logic only gives man what he needs... Magic gives him what he wants.

Men | Sound | Taste |

William Shakespeare

About the sixth hour; when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper.

God | Peace | Taste | Treason | God |

William Shakespeare

A coward, a most devout coward; religious in it. Twelfth Night, or, What You Will (Fabian at III, iv)

Death | Men | Taste | Will |

William Shakespeare

Cesario, by the roses of the spring, by maidhood, honor, truth, and everything, I love thee so, that maugre all thy pride, nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.

Conscience | Counsel | Devil | Father | Friend | God | Good | Heart | Taste | Will | Counsel | God |

William Shakespeare

Come, I know thou lovest me; and at night, when you come into your closet, you'll question this gentlewoman about me; and I know, Kate, you will to her dispraise those parts in me that you love with your heart. But, good Kate, mock me mercifully; the rather, gentle princess, because I love thee cruelly. King Henry V, Act v, Scene 2

Taste |

William Law

Why all this strife and zeal about opinions? Death and life go on their own way, carry on their own work, and stay for no opinions... What a delusion it is therefore to grow gray-headed in balancing ancient and modern opinions; to waste the precious uncertain fire of life in critical zeal and verbal animosities; when nothing but the kindling of our working will into a faith that overcometh the world, into a steadfast hope, and ever-burning love and desire of the divine life, can hinder us from falling into eternal death.

Enough | God | Good | Neglect | Religion | Taste | Terror | God |

William James

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

Birth | Indignation | Inferiority | Injustice | Injustice | Life | Life | Men | Nothing | Pain | Taste |

William Melmoth, wrote under pseudonym Sir Thomas Fitzosborne

Upon this principle I imagine it is that some of the finest pieces of antiquity are written in the dialogue manner. Plato and Tully, it should seem, thought truth could never be examined with more advantage than amidst the amicable opposition of well-regulated converse.

Absurd | Circumstances | Contrast | Conversation | Friend | Language | Learning | Lord | Method | Reason | Spirit | Strength | Wonder | World |

William James

There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.

Emotions | Taste |

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

You know,' he said, sitting back, reflectively, 'it's at times like this that you kind of wonder if it's worth worrying about the fabric of space-time and the causal integrity of the multidimensional probability matrix and the potential collapse of all waveforms in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash and all that sort of stuff that's been bugging me.

Experience | Learning |

Dugald Stewart

Inclination is another word with which will is frequently confounded. Thus, when the apothecary says, in Romeo and Juliet,— “My poverty, but not my will, consents; Take this and drink it off; the work is done.” the word will is plainly used as synonymous with inclination; not in the strict logical sense, as the immediate antecedent of action. It is with the same latitude that the word is used in common conversation, when we think of doing a thing which duty prescribes, against one’s own will; or when we speak of doing a thing willingly or unwillingly.

Acquaintance | Attainment | Books | Correctness | Grace | Language | Lying | Men | Merit | Purity | Reading | Style | Taste | Writing |

William Shakespeare

O Lord, that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.

Good | Learning |