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 James

The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.

God | Little | Men | Opinion | God |

William James

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

Example | Experience | God | Men | Mysticism | Passion | Philosophy | Power | Soul | Unique | God |

William James

We keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can.

Fighting | Human race | Imagination | Men | Opinion | Peace | Public | Race | Thought | War | Thought |

William (Morley Punshon) McFee

There is far too much talk of love and grief benumbing the faculties, turning the hair gray, and destroying a man's interest in his work. Grief has made many a man look younger.

Men |

William Law

The one supreme, unchangeable rule of love, which is a law to all intelligent beings of all worlds and will be a law to all eternity, is this, viz., that God alone is to be loved for Himself, and all other beings only in Him and for Him. Whatever intelligent creature lives not under this rule of love is so far fallen from the order of his creation, and is, till he returns to this eternal law of love, an apostate from God and incapable of the kingdom of Heaven. Now, if God is alone to be loved for Himself, then no creature is to be loved for itself; and so all self-love in every creature is absolutely condemned. And if all created beings are only to be loved in and for God, then my neighbor is to be loved as I love myself, and I am only to love myself as I love my neighbor or any other created being that is, only in and for God.

Earth | Heaven | Men | Obedience |

William Law

What a strange thing is it, that a little health, or the poor business of a shop, should keep us so senseless of these great things that are coming so fast upon us!

Frailties | Men |

William James

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

Chance | Genius | Individual | Men | Mystery | People | Public | Inertia |

William James

The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.

Ideas | Men |

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 James

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

Birth | Indignation | Inferiority | Injustice | Injustice | Life | Life | Men | Nothing | Pain | Taste |

William Matthews

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.

Men | Suffering | Happiness |

William (Morley Punshon) McFee

It is extraordinary how many emotional storms one may weather in safety if one is ballasted with ever so little gold.

History | Little | Men | Success | Unique | Following |

William James

The path to cheerfulness is to sit cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.

Men | Opposition |

William James

When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it in its wholeness.

Better | History | Marriage | Men | Protest | Thinking | Thought | Time | Child | Thought |

William Matthews

The petty cares, the minute anxieties, the infinite littles which go to make up the sum of human experience, like the invisible granules of powder, give the last and highest polish to a character.

Life | Life | Men | Tragedy |

William James

Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions.

Capacity | Conduct | Failure | Men | Will | Failure |

William Matthews

It is in vain to torment oneself over sufferings that one cannot alleviate.

Men | Self-knowledge |

William James

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.

Appetite | Better | Men | World | Loss |

William James

Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

Authority | Civilization | Cruelty | Discipline | Doubt | Duty | Force | Little | Manliness | Men | Opinion | Public | Question | War | Work | Cruelty | Afraid |

William James

The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in.

Absolute | Ambition | Blush | Education | Feelings | Honor | Individual | Men | Pride | Question | Race | Reason | Right | Shame | System | Time | Worth | Ambition | Old |