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 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 |

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 McKinley

Our faith teaches that there is no safer reliance than upon the God of our fathers, who has so singularly favored the American people in every national trial, and who will not forsake us so long as we obey His commandments and walk humbly in His footsteps.

Blessings | God | Peace | Prayer | Will | God |

William James

Our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.

Emotions | Hypothesis | Insult | Mind | Order | Perception | Receive | Right | Thinking | Insult | Following | Afraid |

William James

Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics. It would seem that she cannot be a mere anachronism and survival, but must exert a permanent function, whether she be with or without intellectual content, and whether, if she have any, it be true or false. We must next pass beyond the point of view of merely subjective utility, and make inquiry into the intellectual content itself. First, is there, under all the discrepancies of the creeds, a common nucleus to which they bear their testimony unanimously? And second, ought we to consider the testimony true? I will take up the first question first, and answer it immediately in the affirmative. The warring gods and formulas of the various religions do indeed cancel each other, but there is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet. It consists of two parts: — 1. An uneasiness; and 2. Its solution. 1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand. 2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.

Mind | Nothing | Power | Sacred | Understand |

William James

Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.

Education | Failure | Ideas | Means | Mind | Nothing | Failure | Vicissitudes |

William James

The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.

Consciousness | Mind | Nothing | Psychology | Sense |

William James

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.

Mind | Nature | Order | Religion | Sacrifice | Surrender | Happiness |

William James

The faith circle is so congruous with human nature that the only explanation of the veto that intellectualists pass upon it must be sought in the offensive character to them of the faiths of certain concrete persons.

Mind |

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 Morris

A good way to rid one's self of a sense of discomfort is to do something. That uneasy, dissatisfied feeling is actual force vibrating out of order; it may be turned to practical account by giving proper expression to its creative character.

Body | Heart | Mind |

William Morris

One was there who left all his friends behind; who going inland ever more and more, and being left quite alone, at last did find a lonely valley sheltered from the wind, wherein, amidst an ancient cypress wood, a long-deserted ruined castle stood.

Attention | Cause | Danger | Earth | Man | Men | Peace | Society | War | Society | Danger |

William Morris

I too will go, remembering what I said to you, when any land, the first to which we came seemed that we sought, and set your hearts aflame, and all seemed won to you: but still I think, perchance years hence, the fount of life to drink, unless by some ill chance I first am slain. But boundless risk must pay for boundless gain.

Happy | Imagination | Man | Memory | Men | Mind | Past | Pleasure | Soul | Will | Wills | Work | Think |

William Morris

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

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

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

What are you after? Well, said Zaphod airily, It's partly the curiosity, partly a sense of adventure, but mostly I think it's the fame and the money.

Little | Mind |

Drew Curtis

White House pressrooms (no matter which political party is in charge) toss out a huge dump of bad news around 5:00 PM every Friday. Which as far as I can tell is at least five hours after the media corps has clocked out for a three-martini lunch with no intention of coming back to work until Monday.

Mind | People | Story | Witness |

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

The generality of friends puts us out of conceit with friendship; just as the generality of religious people puts us out of conceit with religion.

Mind |