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 James

Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.

Dreams | Energy | Enough | People |

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

The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds

Darkness | Dignity | Earth | God | Heaven | God |

William Law

All people desire what they believe will make them happy. If a person is not full of desire for God, we can only conclude that he is engaged with another happiness.

Desire | Eternity | Heaven | Life | Life | Power | Prayer | Soul |

William Law

As the health and strength or weakness of our bodies is very much owing to their methods of treating us when we were young, so the soundness or folly of our minds is not less owing to those first tempers and ways of thinking which we eagerly received from the love, tenderness, authority, and constant conversation of our mothers.

Beauty | Heaven | Joy | Melody | Nothing | Serenity | Beauty |

William Law

The one supreme, unchangeable rule of love, which is a law to all intelligent beings of all worlds and will be a law to all eternity, is this, viz., that God alone is to be loved for Himself, and all other beings only in Him and for Him. Whatever intelligent creature lives not under this rule of love is so far fallen from the order of his creation, and is, till he returns to this eternal law of love, an apostate from God and incapable of the kingdom of Heaven. Now, if God is alone to be loved for Himself, then no creature is to be loved for itself; and so all self-love in every creature is absolutely condemned. And if all created beings are only to be loved in and for God, then my neighbor is to be loved as I love myself, and I am only to love myself as I love my neighbor or any other created being that is, only in and for God.

Earth | Heaven | Men | Obedience |

William Law

A frequent intercession with God, earnestly beseeching Him to forgive the sins of all mankind, to bless them with His providence, enlighten them with His Spirit, and bring them to everlasting happiness, is the divinest exercise that the heart of man can be engaged in. Be daily, therefore, on your knees, in a solemn deliberate performance of this devotion, praying for others in such forms, with such length, importunity, and earnestness, as you use for yourself; and you will find all little, ill-natured passions die away, your heart grow great and generous, delighting in the common happiness of others, as you used only to delight in your own.

Enough | People | Power |

William Morris

Fear and Hope — those are the names of the two great passions which rule the race of man, and with which revolutionists have to deal; to give hope to the many oppressed and fear to the few oppressors, that is our business; if we do the first and give hope to the many, the few must be frightened by their hope; otherwise we do not want to frighten them; it is not revenge we want for poor people, but happiness; indeed, what revenge can be taken for all the thousands of years of the sufferings of the poor?

Light |

William Morris

Of rich men it telleth, and strange is the story how they have, and they hanker, and grip far and wide And they live and they die, and the earth and its glory has been but a burden they scarce might abide.

Death | Heaven | Hell | Hope | Little | Past | Pleasure | Power | Words |

William Morris

For Queen Diana did my body change into a fork-tongued dragon flesh and fell, and through the island nightly do I range, or in the green sea mate with monsters strange, when in the middle of the moonlit night the sleepy mariner I do affright.

Men | Paradise | Pardon | Will |

William Morris

Lo, the lovers unloved that draw nigh for your blessing! For your tale makes the dreaming whereby yet they live the dreams of the day with their hopes of redressing, the dreams of the night with the kisses they give, the dreams of the dawn wherein death and hope strive.

Deeds | Earth | Love | Pain | Sound | World | Deeds |

William Morris

My work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another.

William Morris

Eve shall kiss night, and the leaves stir like rain as the wind stealeth light o'er the grass of the plain. Unseen are thine eyes mid the dreamy night's sleeping, and on my mouth there lies

William Morris

So I say, if you cannot learn to love real art at least learn to hate sham art and reject it.

Art | Will | Art |

William Morris

From out the throng and stress of lies, from out the painful noise of sighs, one voice of comfort seems to rise: "It is the meaner part that dies."

Earth | Heaven | Life | Life | Reward | World |

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 |

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

When you're a student or whatever, and you can't afford a car, or a plane fare, or even a train fare, all you can do is hope that someone will stop and pick you up.

Dreams | Heart | Hope | Afraid |

William Shakespeare

O here will I set of my everlasting rest and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world wearied flesh eyes look your last arms take your last embrace and lips all you the doors of breath seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death.

Darkness | Heaven | Love | Man | Power | Sympathy |

William Shakespeare

O! from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

Heaven |