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 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

Through the want of a sincere intention of pleasing God in all our actions, we fall into such irregularities of life as, by the ordinary means of grace, we should have power to avoid.

Comfort | Light | Man | Men | Nature | Order | People | Sensibility | World | Afraid |

William (Morley Punshon) McFee

The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps cool.

Comfort | Existence |

William Matthews

Nature cuts queer capers with men’s phizzes at times, and confounds all the deductions of philosophy. Character does not put all its goods, sometimes not any of them, in its shop-window.

Comfort | Truth |

William Morris

From those thy words, I deem from some distress by deeds of mine thy dear life I might save; O then, delay not! if one ever gave his life to any, mine I give to thee; come, tell me what the price of love must be? Swift death, to be with thee a day and night and with the earliest dawning to be slain? Or better, a long year of great delight, and many years of misery and pain? Or worse, and this poor hour for all my gain? A sorry merchant am I on this day,e'en as thou willest so must I obey.

Comfort | Noise |

William Shakespeare

O my love, my wife! Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.

Man | Virtue | Virtue |

William Shakespeare

O my good lord, why are you thus alone? For what offense have I this fortnight been a banished woman from my Harry's bed? Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep? Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth, and start so often when thou sit'st alone? Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks and given my treasures and my rights of thee to thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy? In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watched, and heard thee murmur tales of iron wars, speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed, cry 'courage! To the field!' and thou hast talked of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, of Palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, of basilisks, of cannon, culverin, of prisoners' ransom, and of soldiers slain, and all the currents of a heady fight. Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war, and thus hath so bestirred thee in thy sleep, that beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow like bubbles in a late-disturbèd stream, and in thy face strange motions have appeared, such as we see when men restrain their breath on some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these? Some heavy business hath my lord in hand, and I must know it, else he loves me not. Henry IV, Act ii, Scene 3

Comfort | Good | Pardon | Past |

William Shakespeare

O, but they say the tongues of dying men enforce attention like deep harmony. Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain, for they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. He that no more must say is listened more than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose. More are men's ends marked than their lives before. The setting sun, and music at the close, as the last taste of sweets, is… Richard II, Act ii, Scene 1

Earth |

William Shakespeare

Now good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both!

Comfort | God | Light | God |

William Shakespeare

Oh, flatter me; for love delights in praises.

Earth |

William Shakespeare

Of France and England, did this king succeed; whose state so many had the managing. That they lost France and made his England bleed.

Comfort | Man | Sorrow |

Sei Shōnagon

One has carefully scented a robe and then forgotten about it for several days. When finally one comes to wear it, the aroma is even more delicious than on freshly scented clothes.

Comfort | Feelings | Joy | Wants |

Edwin Percy Whipple

True wisdom, indeed, springs from the wide brain which is fed from the deep heart; and it is only when age warms its withering conceptions at the memory of its youthful fire, when it makes experience serve aspiration, and knowledge illumine the difficult paths through which thoughts thread their way into facts,--it is only then that age becomes broadly and nobly wise.

Comfort | Consolation | Insult | Knowing | Pleasure | World | Insult |

Edwin Way Teale

All of the animals except for man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it.

Comfort | Consolation | Insult | Knowing | Object | Pleasure | World | Insult |

Elias L. Magoon

He is always the severest censor on the merits of others who has the least worth of his own.

Earth | Energy | God | Rest | Reward | God |

William Shakespeare

Soft pity enters an iron gate.

Comfort |

William Shakespeare

So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

Comfort |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the monkey mind. The thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. My mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

Prayer | Universe |

Elizabeth Gilbert

Creative people always suffer from depression because we're so super sensitive and special?

Challenge | Comfort | Enough | Humanity | Means | Money | Need | People | Pleasure | Search | Skill | System | Time | Will | World |

Elizabeth Gilbert

I was perfectly happy in my boring life before you came along.

Chance | Comfort | Practice | Sadness |