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

To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one have already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time.

Belief | Change | Fear | Past | Sense | World |

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

Architecture would lead us to all the arts, as it did with earlier mean: but if we despise it and take no note of how we are housed, the other arts will have a hard time of it indeed.

Death | Earth | Life | Life | Mirth | Pain | Past | Pleasure | Praise | Will |

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

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

And the clouds fade above. Loved lips are thine as i tremble and hearken; bright thine eyes shine, though the leaves thy brow darken. O love, kiss me into silence, lest no word avail me, stay my head with thy bosom lest breath and life fail me! O sweet day, o rich day, made long for our love!

Change | Doubt | Fear | Past | Smile | Wonder |

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 |

William Morris

Not on one strand are all life's jewels strung.

Better | Leisure | Past | Peace | Time | Work | World |

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?

Change | Past | Ugly |

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 |

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

Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy.

Future | Past | Present |

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

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

Future | Past | Present |

William Shakespeare

Now I stand as one upon a rock, environed with a wilderness of sea, who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, expecting ever when some envious surge will in his brinish bowels swallow him.

Past | Strength | Weakness |