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

A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain... Makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes. Henry IV, Act iv, Scene 3

Age | God | Good | Will | Wit | World | God | Old |

William Shakespeare

Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus; home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.

Study |

Iris Murdoch, aka Dame Jean Iris Murdoch

One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.

Better | Faith | God | Good | Love | Time | Will | Work | God | Afraid | Learn |

William James

First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.

William James

If a man's good for nothing else, he can at least teach philosophy.

Psychology |

William James

The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.

Art | Man | Means | Art |

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

Whatever is beyond this narrow rational consciousness we mistake for our only consciousness.

Courage | Men | Nations | Need | Valor | Valor |

William James

The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.

History | Life | Life | Need | Religion | Survival |

William Law

The spirit of prayer is a pressing forth of the soul out of this earthly life, it is a stretching with all its desire after the life of God, it is a leaving, as far as it can, all its own spirit, to receive a spirit from above, to be one life, one love, one spirit with Christ in God.

Calamity | Distress | God | Good | Heart | Love | Man | Peace | Repentance | Right | Sin | Will | Calamity | God |

William Law

Through the want of a sincere intention of pleasing God in all our actions, we fall into such irregularities of life as, by the ordinary means of grace, we should have power to avoid.

Comfort | Light | Man | Men | Nature | Order | People | Sensibility | World | Afraid |

William Morris

A pattern is either right or wrong.... It is no stronger than its weakest point.

Imagination | Man | Memory | Mind | Soul | Will | Wills |

William James

They conquer who believe they can. He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

Belief | Life | Life | Will | Words | Worth | Afraid |

William Law

There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this it is, and there is no other... The merit of persons is to be no rule of our charity; but we are to do acts of kindness to those that least of all deserve it.

Awakening | Desire | Force | God | Heart | Life | Life | Longing | Man | Prayer | Spirit | Thought | Time | Will | God | Thought |

William Morris

I too will go, remembering what I said to you, when any land, the first to which we came seemed that we sought, and set your hearts aflame, and all seemed won to you: but still I think, perchance years hence, the fount of life to drink, unless by some ill chance I first am slain. But boundless risk must pay for boundless gain.

Happy | Imagination | Man | Memory | Men | Mind | Past | Pleasure | Soul | Will | Wills | Work | Think |

William Morris

Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of defeat, and when it comes it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name

Imagination | Man | Men | Past |

William Morris

Forsooth, ye have heard it said that ye shall do well in this world that in the world to come ye may live happily for ever; do ye well then, and have your reward both on earth and in heaven; for I say to you that earth and heaven are not two but one; and this one is that which ye know, and are each one of you a part of, to wit, the Holy Church, and in each one of you dwelleth the life of the Church, unless ye slay it.

Heart | Hell | Man | Memory | Wife | Gossip | Think |

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically that not one of them is worth all the bother. On Earth — when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass — the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another — particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke, and short of fish.

Technology |

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

People | Peril | Trouble |

Drew Curtis

White House pressrooms (no matter which political party is in charge) toss out a huge dump of bad news around 5:00 PM every Friday. Which as far as I can tell is at least five hours after the media corps has clocked out for a three-martini lunch with no intention of coming back to work until Monday.

Mind | People | Story | Witness |