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

We need only in cold blood to act as if the thing in question were real and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real.

Habit | Initiative | Life | Life | Mind | Will |

William Law

If [we] have no chosen the kingdom of God [first], it will make in the end no difference what [we] have chosen instead.

Desire | Life | Life | Nothing | Perfection |

William Law

Perhaps it may he found more easy to forget the language than to part entirely with those tempers which we learnt in misery.

Evil | Heart | Power | Prayer | Strength | Weakness | Words |

William Mason

There is a grace in wild variety surpassing rule and order.

Inconvenient | Love | Spirit | Temper |

William Law

Now since our eternal state is as certainly ours, as our present state; since we are as certainly to live forever, as we now live at all; it is plain, that we cannot judge of the value of any particular time, as to us, but by comparing it to that eternal duration, for which we are created.

Blame | Care | Earnestness | God | Love | Man | Men | Mind | Nothing | Spirit | Wise | God |

William Law

Why all this strife and zeal about opinions? Death and life go on their own way, carry on their own work, and stay for no opinions... What a delusion it is therefore to grow gray-headed in balancing ancient and modern opinions; to waste the precious uncertain fire of life in critical zeal and verbal animosities; when nothing but the kindling of our working will into a faith that overcometh the world, into a steadfast hope, and ever-burning love and desire of the divine life, can hinder us from falling into eternal death.

Enough | God | Good | Neglect | Religion | Taste | Terror | God |

William Matthews

There is a wide difference between general acquaintance and companionship. You may salute a man and exchange compliments with him daily, yet know nothing of his character, his inmost tastes and feelings.

Alchemy | Luxury | Man | System | Tears | Worth | Youth | Youth |

William Matthews

What lasting progress was ever made in social reformation, except when every step was insured by appeals to the understanding and the will?

Contempt | Forethought | Love | Man | Mind | Present | Qualities | Riches | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Wrong | Riches | Thought |

William James

We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.

Consciousness | Mind | Suppression |

William Law

Everything in... nature, is descended out that which is eternal, and stands as a... visible outbirth of it, so when we know how to separate out the grossness, death, and darkness... from it, we find... it in its eternal state.

Evil | Expectation | Experience | God | Nature | Nothing | Opposition | Rebellion | Trust | Will | God | Expectation |

William Law

Take away this measure from our dress and habits, and all is turned into such paint, and glitter, and ridiculous ornaments, as are a real shame to the wearer.

Capacity | God | Good | Happy | Life | Life | God |

William Law

Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God.

Beginning | Day | Desire | Good | Growth | Heart | Life | Life | Method | Nothing | Prayer | Wonder | Vice |

William James

The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.

Mind | Teacher |

William Law

Continuing a Lenten series on prayer: When a man has had so much benefit from the gospel, as to know his own misery, his want of a redeemer, who he is, and how is he to be found; there everything seems to be done, both to awaken and direct his prayer, and make it a true praying in and by the Spirit. For when the heart really pants and longs after God, its prayer is a praying, as moved and animated by the Spirit of God; it is the breath or inspiration of God, stirring, moving and opening itself in the heart. For though the early nature, our old man, can oblige or accustom himself to take heavenly words at certain times into his mouth, yet this is a certain truth, that nothing ever did, or can have the least desire or tendency to ascend to heaven, but that which came down from heaven; and therefore nothing in the heart can pray, aspire, and long after God, but the Spirit of God moving and stirring in it.

Heart | Nothing | Prayer | Progress | Right | Trouble |

William Law

Now this is the ground and original of the Spirit of Love in the creature, it is and must be a will to all goodness; and you have not the Spirit of Love in you till you have this will to all goodness at all times and on all occasions. You may indeed do many works of love and delight in them -- especially at such times as they are not inconvenient to your state or temper or occurrences in life. But the Spirit of Love is not in you till it is the spirit of your life, till you live freely, willingly, and universally according to it.

Eternal | Present | Value |

William James

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

Experience |

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 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

The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.

Mind | Study | Words |

William James

The characteristics of the affective experience which, to avoid ambiguity, should, I think, be called the state of assurance rather than the faith-state, can be easily enumerated, though it is probably difficult to realize their intensity, unless one has been through the experience one's self.

Belief | Change | Passion | Peace | Salvation | Sense | Will | Loss |