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

We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not so.

Example | Giving | Reason |

William Law

This, and this alone… a universal holiness in every part of life, a heavenly wisdom in all our actions, not conforming to the spirit and temper of the world but turning all worldly enjoyments into means of piety and devotion to God.

Pious | Wise |

William Law

Money we either lock up in chests, or waste it in needless and ridiculous expenses upon ourselves, whilst the poor and the distressed want it for necessary uses.

Enjoyment | Good | Life | Life | Wise | Blessed |

William Morris

O hearken the words of his voice of compassion: "come cling round about me, ye faithful who sicken of the weary unrest and the world's passing fashions! As the rain in mid-morning your troubles shall thicken, but surely within you some godhead doth quicken, as ye cry to me heeding, and leading you home."

Daughter | Men | Wise |

William Morris

Forsooth, brothers, fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell: fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death: and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them, and the life that is in it, that shall live on and on forever, and each one of you part of it, while many a man's life upon the earth from the earth shall wane.

Grief | Pain | Will | Wise |

Douglas William Jerrold

He kissed her and promised. Such beautiful lips! Man's usual fate - he was lost upon the coral reefs.

Nothing | Time | Wise |

Drew Curtis

Personally I’m hoping to spend the last years of my life plugged into a real life.

Example | News | Right |

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

No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.

Wise |

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

No accidents are so unlucky but that the wise may draw some advantage from them; nor are there any so lucky but that the foolish may turn them to their own prejudice.

Evil | Example | Good | Shame |

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

It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.

Esteem | Wise | Friends |

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

That good disposition which boasts of being most tender is often stifled by the least urging of self-interest.

Conduct | Wise |

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

The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.

Art | Constancy | Wise | Art |

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

It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.

Wise |

William Shakespeare

O momentary grace of mortal men, which we more hunt for than the grace of God! Who builds his hope in air of your fair looks, lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, ready, with every nod, to tumble down into the fatal bowels of the deep.

Delay | Mirth | Present | Will | Wise |

William Shakespeare

O woe! O woeful, woeful, woeful day! Most lamentable day! Most woeful day that ever, ever I did yet behold! O day, O day, O day! O hateful day! Never was seen so black a day as this. O woeful day! O woeful day! Nurse, scene v

Art | Wise | Art |

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

Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.

Folly | Wise |