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

All the infections that the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him by inch-meal a disease! The tempest, act ii, Scene 2

Object | Pleasure | Virtue | Virtue |

William Shakespeare

Apollo's angry; and the heavens themselves do strike at my injustice.

Amends | Sin | Virtue | Virtue |

William Shakespeare

Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow, ang'ring itself and others.

Calumny | Virtue | Virtue |

William Shakespeare

Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France; For ere thou can'st report I will be there, The thunder of my cannon shall be heard; So hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath.

Calumny | Virtue | Virtue | Will |

William Shakespeare

Can you not see? Or will ye not observe the strangeness of his altered countenance? With what a majesty he bears himself, how insolent of late he is become, how proud, how peremptory, and unlike himself? We know the time since he was mild and affable, and if we did but glance a far-off look, immediately he was upon his knee, that all the court admired him for submission; but meet him now and, be it in the morn, when everyone will give the time of day, he knits his brow and shows an angry eye and passeth by with stiff unbowèd knee, disdaining duty that to us belongs. Small curs are not regarded when they grin, but great men tremble when the lion roars, and Humphrey is no little man in England. First note that he is near you in descent, and should you fall, he is the next will mount. Me seemeth then it is no policy, respecting what a rancorous mind he bears and his advantage following your decease, that he should come about your royal person or be admitted to your highness' council. By flattery hath he won the commons' heart; and when he please to make commotion, 'tis to be feared they all will follow him. Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted. Suffer them now, and they'll o'ergrow the garden and choke the herbs for want of husbandry. The reverent care I bear unto my lord made me collect these dangers in the duke. If it be fond, call it a woman's fear; which fear if better reasons can supplant, I will subscribe and say I wronged the duke. My lord of Suffolk, Buckingham, and York, reprove my allegation if you can, or else conclude my words effectual. Henvry VI, Part II, Act iii, Scene 1

Order | Virtue | Virtue | Will |

William Shakespeare

CAMILLO: Prosperity's the very bond of love, whose fresh complexion and whose heart together affliction alters. PERDITA: One of these is true: I think affliction may subdue the cheek, but not take in the mind.

Virtue | Virtue | Will |

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To prohibit the reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.

Virtue | Virtue | Will |

William Shakespeare

Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair? Or rather do I not in plainest truth tell you I do not nor I cannot love you? A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act iv, Scene 2

Virtue | Virtue |

William Godwin

For there is such a thing as a broken spirit.

Authority | Censure | Energy | Indulgence | Man | Nothing | Quiet | Reality | Reason | Silence | Virtue | Virtue | Will |

William Shakespeare

Discharge my followers; let them hence away, from Richard's night to Bolingbrooke's fair day. Richard II, Act iii, Scene 2

Credit | Divinity | Virtue | Virtue | Will |

William Godwin

Nor is it a valid objection to say "that, by such a rule, we are making every man a judge in his own case." In the courts of morality it cannot be otherwise; a pure and just system of thinking admits not of the existence of any infallible judge to whom we can appeal. It might indeed be further objected "that, by this rule, men will be called upon to judge in the moment of passion and partiality, instead of being referred to the past decisions of their cooler reason." But this also is an inconvenience inseparable from human affairs. We must and ought to keep our selves open, to the last moment, to the influence of such considerations as may appear worthy to influence us. To teach men that they must not trust their own understandings is not the best scheme for rendering them virtuous and consistent. On the contrary, to inure them to consult their understanding is the way to render it worthy of becoming their director and guide.

Man | Politics | Virtue | Virtue | Will |

William James

But such a straight identification of religion with any and every form of happiness leaves the essential peculiarity of religious happiness out. The more commonplace happinesses which we get are 'reliefs,' occasioned by our momentary escapes from evils either experienced or threatened. But in its most characteristic embodiments, religious happiness is no mere feeling of escape. It cares no longer to escape. It consents to the evil outwardly as a form of sacrifice — inwardly it knows it to be permanently overcome. ... In the Louvre there is a picture, by Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his foot on Satan's neck. The richness of the picture is in large part due to the fiend's figure being there. The richness of its allegorical meaning also is due to his being there — that is, the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

Day | Death | Insight | Little | Man | Method | Mind | Patience | Psychology | Style | Success | Superiority | Tenacity | Thought | Uncertainty | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Thought |

William James

Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.

Virtue | Virtue |

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 Matthews

I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen, and so I swung into action and wrote a poem, and it was miserable, for that's how I thought poetry worked: you digested experience and shat literature.

Virtue | Virtue | World | Value |

William Melmoth, wrote under pseudonym Sir Thomas Fitzosborne

Interesting anecdotes afford examples which may be of use in respect to our own conduct.

Applause | Reward | Virtue | Virtue |

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

There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.

Self-interest | Virtue | Virtue |

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

There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard there was such a thing.

Virtue | Virtue |