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 world - without - end bargain.

Thought | Thought |

William Shakespeare

A thousand hearts are great within my bosom: Advance our standards, set upon our foes; Our ancient word of courage, fair St. George, Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons! Upon them! Victory sits upon our helms.

Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

William Shakespeare

Ay, every inch a king: when I do stare, see how the subject quakes. I pardon that man's life. — What was thy cause? — Adultery? — Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: the wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; for Gloster's bastard son was kinder to his father than my daughters got 'tween the lawful sheets. To't, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers. — Behold yond simpering dame, whose face between her forks presages snow; that minces virtue, and does shake the head to hear of pleasure's name; — the fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't with a more riotous appetite down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiend's; there's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit; burning, scalding, stench, consumption! — fie, fie, fie! pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there's money for thee. King Lear, Act iv, Scene 6

Fear | Life | Life | Nature | Paradise | Spirit | Thought | Thought |

William Shakespeare

An if I live until I be a man, I'll win our ancient right in France again, or die a soldier, as I liv'd a king.

Cunning | Thought | Thought |

William Shakespeare

Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me.

Thought | Thought |

William Shakespeare

Ay, Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.

Thought | Thought |

William Shakespeare

And, oftentimes, excusing of a fault, Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse. The Life and Death of King John (Pembroke at IV, ii)

Age | Love | Pride | Thought | Wife | Will | Thought |

William Shakespeare

But this rough magic I here abjure, and when I have required some heavenly music—which even now I do— to work mine end upon their senses that this airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound I'll drown my book.

Thought | Thought |

William Shakespeare

Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back when gold and silver becks me to come on. The Life and Death of King John, Act iii, Scene 3

Comedy | Love | Thought | Thought |

William Shakespeare

But man, proud man, drest in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he’s most assur'd; his glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep. Measure for Measure. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Heaven | Love | Power | Thought | Will | Thought |

William Shakespeare

Because I will not do the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; I will live a bachelor.

Heart | Sound | Thought | Thought | Vice |

William Shakespeare

Believe me for mine honor, and have respect to mine honor, that you may believe. Julius Caesar, Act iii, Scene 2

Absence | Bitterness | Happy | Question | Thought | Time | Will | Think | Thought |

William Shakespeare

Death is my son-in-law. Death is my heir. My daughter he hath wedded. I will die, and leave him all. Life, living, all is Death’s. Romeo and Juliet, Act iv, Scene 5

Fear | Life | Life | Nature | Paradise | Spirit | Thought | Thought |

William Godwin

If a thing be really good, it can be shown to be such.

Folly | Loathing | Man | Resolution | Thought | Thought |

William James

Give your dreams all you've got and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.

Care | Destiny | Thought | Will | Thought |

William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters

Now I know that so long as we have social inequality we shall have snobs; we shall have men who bully and truckle, and women who snub and crawl. I know that it is futile to, spurn them, or lash them for trying to get on in the world, and that the world is what it must be from the selfish motives which underlie our economic life.

Evil | Heart | Thought | Will | Thought |

William James

In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut eachothers’ throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing amodus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.

Appetite | Better | Glory | Kill | Life | Life | Love | Man | Men | Nations | Thought | War | Thought |

William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters

I dare say if you'd asked him plumply what he meant in regard to the young lady, he would have told you - if he knew.'

Thought | Thought |

William James

I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.

Character | Thought | Thought |

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 |