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

Tom Hopkins

No one limits your growth but you. If you want to earn more, learn more. That means you´ll work harder for a while; that means you'll work longer for a while. But you'll be paid for your extra effort with enhanced earnings down the road

Reality |

William Godwin

For there is such a thing as a broken spirit.

Authority | Censure | Energy | Indulgence | Man | Nothing | Quiet | Reality | Reason | Silence | Virtue | Virtue | Will |

Daniel Gilbert, fully Daniel Todd Gilbert, aka Professor Happiness

What’s so curious about human beings is that we can look deeply into the future, foresee disaster, and still do nothing in the present to stop it. The majority of people on this planet, they’re overwhelmed with concerns about their immediate well being.

Imagination | Reality |

Daniel Gilbert, fully Daniel Todd Gilbert, aka Professor Happiness

We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy.

Conspiracy | Looks | Reality |

William James

It is a fact that in each of us, when awake (and often when asleep), some kind of consciousness is always going on. There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves, or fields (or of whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that constitute our inner life. The existence of this stream is the primal fact, the nature and origin of it form the essential problem, of our science.

Reality |

William James

Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things.

Evil | Good | Man | Melancholy | Reality | Thought | Happiness | Thought |

William James

Man's perfection would be the fulfillment of his end; and his end would be union with his Maker.

Capacity | Frailties | Instinct | Mystery | Reality | Risk | Service | World |

William James

If you can change your mind, you can change your life.

Change | Enough | Future | Past | Reality | Will |

William James

Happiness, like every other emotional state, has blindness and insensibility to opposing facts given it as its instinctive weapon for self-protection against disturbance. When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in. He must ignore it; and to the bystander he may then seem perversely to shut his eyes to it and hush it up.

Capacity | Reality | Risk | Think |

William James

When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.

Evil | Good | Man | Melancholy | Reality | Thought | Happiness | Thought |

William James

Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it religiously. It is a sort of sacrament. It's profits are to the vanquished as well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question of profit, it is an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature at its highest dynamic.

Church | God | Good | Happy | Heart | Love | Prayer | Reality | Religion | Talking | Thought | God | Thought | Understand |

William Law

Piety requires us to renounce no ways of life where we can act reasonably, and offers what we do to the glory of God.

Perfection | Piety | Pleasure | Progress | Reality | Reason | Receive | Religion | Wonder |

William James

The emotions are not always subject to reason ... but they are always subject to action. When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.

Individual | Reality |

William James

Whenever two men meet there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man was the other sees him, and each man as he really is.

Reality |

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 James

These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

Individual | Reality |

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 |

Drew Curtis

I love Sweden. The entire world should be like Sweden. They all like to drink and get naked, and the women are hot. I can't think of a better nation on the planet.

Argument | Giving | Guarantee | Judgment | Reality | Will |

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

The pleasure of love is in the loving; and there is more joy in the passion one feels than in that which one inspires.

Distrust | Injustice | Injustice | Reality | Self-interest |

Egyptian Proverbs

In every vital activity it is the path that matters.

Reality |