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

April O fair mid-spring, besung so oft and oft, How can I praise thy loveliness enow? Thy sun that burns not, and thy breezes soft That o'er the blossoms of the orchard blow, The thousand things that 'neath the young leaves grow, The hopes and chances of the growing year, Winter forgotten long, and summer near. When summer brings the lily and the rose, She brings us fear-her very death she brings Hid in her anxious heart, the forge of woes; And, dull with fear, no more the mavis sings. But thou! thou diest not, but thy fresh life clings About the fainting autumn's sweet decay, When in the earth the hopeful seed they lay. Ah! life of all the year, why yet do I, Amid thy snowy blossoms' fragrant drift, Still long for that which never draweth nigh, Striving my pleasure from my pain to sift, Some weight from off my fluttering mirth to lift? - Now, when far bells are ringing Come again, Come back, past years! why will ye pass in vain?

Desire | Life | Life | Passion |

William Shakespeare

O curse of marriage! That we can call these delicate creatures ours, and not their appetites. I had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapour of a dungeon, than keep a corner in the thing I love for others' uses. Othello, Act iii, Scene 3

Cunning | Enemy | Sin | Temptation | Temptation |

William Shakespeare

O our lives' sweetness, That we the pain of death would hourly die Rather than die at once!

Guilt | Sin |

William Shakespeare

OLIVIA: How does he love me? VIOLA: With adoration, with fertile tears, with groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.

Amends | Counsel | Good | Man | Sin | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Counsel |

William Shakespeare

Plead what I will be, not what I have been; not my deserts, but what I will deserve.

Mortal | Sin | Youth | Youth |

William Shakespeare

O, she will sing the savageness out of a bear!

Endurance | God | Good | Hell | Life | Life | Man | Past | People | Quiet | Scholar | Sin | Thinking | God |

Saichō NULL

Those monks who went to the Tang to study before spent much time in that country and all were without mention of this, and now you write stating that in Dali 4 (769) they initiated a Mahāyāna high seat where the bodhisattva Mañjuśrī is placed in all temple dining halls across the land. From then until Zhenyuan 22 (806)3, exactly thirty-eight years have passed. It corresponds to Enryaku 25 (806) in the country of Great Japan. As they say, 'Looking at outward appearances unaware of their contents.'

Light | Precept |

Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki

The world know it not; but you, Autumn, I confess it: your wind at night-fall stabs deep into my heart.

Beauty | Change | Men | Precept | Style | Tradition | Trifles | Will | Beauty |

Edward Scribner Ames

It may be said that the supreme revelation is to be found in Jesus Christ and that all the rest of the Bible leads up to him. Yet there are two ways of accepting the words and example of Jesus. One is to take what he says as true because he says it, and another is to believe it because it stands the test of reflection and experience. When his way of life has been confirmed by the demands of intelligence and of practical life, it has gained the deepest security and made its strongest claims upon our loyalty.

Association | Change | Divinity | Ideas | Life | Life | Nature | People | Psychology | Sense | Sin | Strength | Association |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

There are interests by the sacrifice of which peace is too dearly purchased. One should never be at peace to the shame of his own soul - to the violation of his integrity or of his allegiance to God.

Sin |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Profaneness is a brutal vice. - He who indulges in it is no gentleman. - I care not what his stamp may be in society, or what clothes he wears, or what culture he boasts. - Despite all his refinement, the light and habitual taking of God's name in vain, betrays a coarse and brutal will.

Devil | Father | Sin |

Elif Safak

The road to truth is the effort of the heart, not the mind.

Abstinence | Fanaticism | Heart | Rest |

William Shakespeare

ROMEO: Is love a tender thing? it is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn. MERCUTIO: If love be rough with you, be rough with love; prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.

Devotion | Faith | Good | Sin | Wrong |

William Shakespeare

Self-love is the most inhibited sin in the canon.

Sin |

William Shakespeare

Sin will pluck on sin.

Sin |

William Shakespeare

So, of his gentleness, Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me from mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

Business | Cause | Day | Death | Duty | Father | God | Greatness | Guilt | Law | Life | Life | Man | Men | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Sin | Soul | Teach | Time | War | Business | God | Guilty | Think |

Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Of all the thoughts of God that are borne inward unto souls afar, along the Psalmist's music deep, now tell me if that any is. For gift or grace, surpassing this-- "He giveth His beloved sleep."

Grief | Shame | Sin |