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

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it.

Office | People | Public | Regret | Right | System | Crisis |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

You have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life

Existence | Feelings | Ignorance | Mercy | Passion | Time | Waste |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.

Danger | Enough | Existence | Individual | Land | Danger |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

That's the advantage of having lived sixty-five years. You don't feel the need to be impatient any longer.

Existence | Feelings | Happy | Ignorance | Mercy | Time | Waste |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

The best part of married life is the fights. The rest is merely so-so.

Existence | Feelings | Happy | Ignorance | Mercy | Time | Waste |

Timothy Dwight, fully Timothy Dwight IV

What must be the knowledge of Him, from whom all created minds have derived both their power of knowledge, and the innumerable objects of their knowledge! What must be the wisdom of Him, from whom all things derive their wisdom!

Education | Existence | Government | Industry | Learning | Man | Marriage | Refinement | World | Government |

Todd Rundgren, fully Todd Harry Rundgren

There are still people who believe in that and wake up every day believing it's possible, and invest their whole selves in that.

Dishonesty | Existence | Order | Sense |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

It's more important to be free than to be happy.

Bible | Bible |

William Shakespeare

Be patient till the last. Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear: believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe: censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar's, to him I say, that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: - Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honour for his valour; and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply. Julius Caesar, Act iii, Scene 2

Action | Discretion | Modesty |

William James

It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call something there, more deep and more general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed.

Consciousness | Existence | Nature |

William Godwin

Nor is there any reason to believe that sound conviction will be less permanent in its influence than sophistry and error.

Existence | Influence | Man | Men | Morality | Passion | Past | System | Teach | Thinking | Trust | Understanding | Will |

William James

If we take the universe of fitting, countless coats fit backs, and countless boots fit feet, on which they are not practically fitted; countless stones fit gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions fit realities, and countless truths are valid, tho' no thinker ever thinks them.

Existence | Little | System | Words | Understand |

William James

Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for the better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities, and a disgust for cheapjacks. We ought to smell, as it were, the difference of quality in men and their proposals when we enter the world of affairs about us.

Civilization | Existence | Individual |

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

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 |