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

The man who lives in his religious center of personal energy, and is actuated by spiritual enthusiasms, differs from his previous carnal self in perfectly definite ways.

Civilization | Existence | Individual |

William James

The God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the damnatory judgement passed on their failures by the opinion of the world.

Existence | Ideals | Mystical | Sense |

William Law

The pure, mere love of God is that alone from which sinners are justly to expect that no sin will pass unpunished, but that His love will visit them with every calamity and distress that can help to break and purify the bestial heart of man and awaken in him true repentance and conversion to God. It is love alone in the holy Deity that will allow no peace to the wicked, nor ever cease its judgments till every sinner is forced to confess that it is good for him that he has been in trouble, and thankfully own that not the wrath but the love of God has plucked out that right eye, cut off that right band, which he ought to have done but would not do for himself and his own salvation.

Agony | Body | Death | Eternal | Force | Man | Mortal | Progress | Reality |

William Law

Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted to God. He therefore is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life, parts of piety, by doing everything in the name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to his Glory.

Birth | Death | Envy | Existence | Good | Man | Nature | Peace | Power | Self | Soul | Spirit | Will |

William (Morley Punshon) McFee

The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps cool.

Comfort | Existence |

William James

The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience; and the only fulfillment we can speak of is the reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.

Civilization | Day | Evil | Existence | Individual | Life | Life | Melancholy | Right |

William James

The best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: 'This is the real me!'

Argument | Existence | Life | Life | Man |

William James

The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one.

Belief | Existence | Life | Life | Mind | Object | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Sense | Sentiment |

William James

There is a voice inside which speaks and says: This is the real me!

Evil | Existence | Force |

William James

Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

Authority | Civilization | Cruelty | Discipline | Doubt | Duty | Force | Little | Manliness | Men | Opinion | Public | Question | War | Work | Cruelty | 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 |

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

When a man seems to be wise, it is merely that his follies are proportionate to his age and fortune.

Better | Force | Man |

William Shakespeare

O, what a world of vile ill-favored faults Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year. The Merry Wives of Windsor (Anne Page at III, iv)

Conscience | Cunning | Defeat | Devil | Father | Force | Gall | Heart | Heaven | Life | Life | Murder | Oppression | Passion | Play | Power | Property | Revenge | Soul | Spirit | Tears | Weakness | Will | Words | Murder | Guilty |

Sejong the Great, aka King Sejong, family name Yi, given name Do NULL

One of the most essential ingredients of great statesmanship is trust, and especially expressing trust.

Cause | Existence |

Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

Non-perception may be because of extreme distance or proximity, impairment of the senses, mental unsteadiness, subtlety, interposition, suppression, blending with what is similar, and other causes.

Existence | Non-existence | Rest |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

All nature is a vast symbolism; every material fact has sheathed within it a spiritual truth.

Existence | Love | Universe |

Egyptian Proverbs

The only thing that is humiliating is helplessness.

Fear | Force | Object |

Elif Safak

When you see a hand from afar, Kimya, can you do that there is only one school. But you dive into the water, you realize that there is more than a river. The river is hidden inside various currents and they all run in harmony, yet are completely separate from one another.

Belief | Books | Destroy | Force | God | Good | Insanity | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Need | People | Philosophy | Religion | Taste | Time | Words | God | Understand |

Elif Safak

Another rule that the pursuit of love. No one seeks behind only love and simmer During his trip, what The trip begins search for love even begin to change from home and abroad

Better | Existence | God | Heart | Means | Right | Will | God | Think |