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 Law

The obedience of men is to imitate the obedience of angels, and rational beings on earth are to live unto God, as rational beings in heaven live unto him.

Chastity | World |

William Matthews

I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen, and so I swung into action and wrote a poem, and it was miserable, for that's how I thought poetry worked: you digested experience and shat literature.

Virtue | Virtue | World | Value |

William James

The voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully. And act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. To feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end, and courage will very likely replace fear. If we act as if from some better feeling, the bad feeling soon fold its tent like an Arab and silently steals away.

Metaphysics | Non-existence | Thought | World | Thought |

William James

There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.

Death | Ethics | Fear | Trust | World |

William (Morley Punshon) McFee

The worldly relations of men and women often form an equation that cancels out without warning when some insignificant factor has been added to either side.

World |

William James

True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot.

Object | World |

William James

Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.

World |

William Melmoth, wrote under pseudonym Sir Thomas Fitzosborne

Upon this principle I imagine it is that some of the finest pieces of antiquity are written in the dialogue manner. Plato and Tully, it should seem, thought truth could never be examined with more advantage than amidst the amicable opposition of well-regulated converse.

Absurd | Circumstances | Contrast | Conversation | Friend | Language | Learning | Lord | Method | Reason | Spirit | Strength | Wonder | World |

William James

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.

Appetite | Better | Men | World | Loss |

William Law

If there be nothing so glorious as doing good, if there is nothing that makes us so like God, then nothing can be so glorious in the use of our money as to use it all in works of love and goodness.

Ends | Hope | Ideas | Religion | World |

William Morris

Earth, left silent by the wind of night, seems shrunken 'neath the gray unmeasured height.

World |

William Morris

Love is enough: it grew up without heeding in the days when ye knew not its name nor its measure, and its leaflets untrodden by the light feet of pleasure had no boast of the blossom, no sign of the seeding, as the morning and evening passed over its treasure.

Fulfillment | World |

William Morris

Love is enough: through the trouble and tangle from yesterday's dawning to yesterday's night I sought through the vales where the prisoned winds wrangle, till, wearied and bleeding, at end of the light I met him, and we wrestled, and great was my might. And the shadow of the night and not love was departed; I was sore, I was weary, yet love lived to seek; so I scaled the dark mountains, and wandered sad-hearted over wearier wastes, where e'en sunlight was bleak, with no rest of the night for my soul waxen weak.

Day | Deeds | Fear | World | Deeds |

William Morris

Let us speak, love, together some words of our story, that our lips as they part may remember the glory! O soft day, o calm day, made clear for our sake!

Dreams | Giving | World |

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

Love is enough: have no thought for to-morrow if ye lie down this even in rest from your pain, ye who have paid for your bliss with great sorrow.

Dawn | Hope | Rest | World | Think |

William Morris

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

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

William Morris

Love is enough: cherish life that abideth, lest ye die ere ye know him, and curse and misname him; for who knows in what ruin of all hope he hideth, on what wings of the terror of darkness he rideth? And what is the joy of man's life that ye blame him for his bliss grown a sword, and his rest grown a fire?

Day | Deeds | Enough | Fear | Love | World | Deeds |

William Morris

Slayer of the Winter, art thou here again? O welcome, thou that bring'st the Summer nigh! The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain, nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.

World | Negotiation |

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 |