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 Gurnall

The grace thou hast will soon be less, if thou addest not more to it.

Enemy | God | Right | Will | Wrong | God | Child |

William James

It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.

Wrong |

William James

The inner need of believing that this world of nature is a sign of something more spiritual and eternal than itself is just as strong and authoritative in those who feel it, as the inner need of uniform laws of causation ever can be in a professionally scientific head. . . Our faculties of belief were not primarily given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withall, they were given us to live by. And to trust our religious demands means first of all to live in the light of them. . . The part of wisdom as well as of courage is to believe what is in the line of your needs, for only by such belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save yourself.

Better | Man | Means | Universe | Wrong | Following |

William James

What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise. The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may someday seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.

Belief | Excitement | Good | Need | Nothing | Right | Sense | Wrong | Understand |

William Matthews

What lasting progress was ever made in social reformation, except when every step was insured by appeals to the understanding and the will?

Contempt | Forethought | Love | Man | Mind | Present | Qualities | Riches | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Wrong | Riches | Thought |

William James

Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow.

Inquiry | Question | Sense | Will | Wrong |

Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings.

Means | Wrong |

William Shakespeare

Our courteous Antony, whom ne'er the word of 'no' woman heard speak, being barbered ten times o'er, goes to the feast, and for his ordinary pays his heart for what his eyes eat only.

Man | Music | Right | Wrong |

Saichō NULL

Buddhist temples are of three types. I. Temples which are strictly Mahāyāna. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who are new to training reside. II. Temples which are strictly Hīnayāna. These are temples where only the Hīnayāna and vinaya teachers reside. III. Temples where both Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna practice together. These are temples where bodhisattva monks who have trained for a long time reside. Now in the Tendai Lotus School the annual ordinands [candidates for ordination] are all new practitioners who have all directed their minds to the Mahāyāna and for twelve years will be made to reside deep in the mountains at the temple Shishu Sanmai-in 四種三昧院. Upon completion of their training they will provisionally receive the lesser [Hīnayāna] precepts as it benefits others and they will be permitted to provisionally reside in a temple where both [Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna] practices are carried out.

Man | Object | People | Thought | Time | Waiting | Wrong | Child | Thought |

Prince Shōtoku, born Shotoku Taishi, aka Prince Umayado or Prince Kamitsumiya

The Ministers and officials of the state should make proper behavior their first principle, for if the superiors do not behave properly, the inferiors are disorderly; if inferiors behave improperly, offenses will naturally result. Therefore when lord and vassal behave with propriety, the distinctions of rank are not confused: when the people behave properly the Government will be in good order.

Evil | Good | Men | Qualities | Reward | Rule | Wrong |

Edwin Arlington Robinson

You have made the cement of your churches out of tears and ashes, and the fabric will not stand.

Children | Wrong |

Edwin Arlington Robinson

There is a good deal to live for, but a man has to go through hell really to find it out.

God | World | Wrong | God |

Elif Safak

How to deal with the goodness of their loved ones? Could be fought against goodness?

Chastity | Earth | Giving | Good | Guilt | Impression | Responsibility | Self | Truth | Wrong |

Elihu Root

The theoretical postulate of all diplomatic discussion between nations is the assumed willingness of every nation to do justice.

Extreme | Popularity | Right | Wrong |

Elihu Root

When a teacher of the future comes to point out to the youth of America how the highest rewards of intellect and devotion can be gained, he may say to them, not by subtlety and intrigue not by wire pulling and demagoguery not by the arts of popularity not by skill and shiftiness in following expediency but by being firm in devotion to the principles of manhood and the application of morals and the courage of righteousness in the public life of our country by being a man without guile and without fear, without selfishness, and with devotion to duty, devotion to his country.

Better | Character | Evil | Folly | Government | Ignorance | Indifference | Indolence | Knowledge | Law | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Nature | Responsibility | Suffering | Time | World | Wrong | Government |

Eli Pariser

We're working hard to broaden the 2006 battlefield. As more and more people realize that the House is up for grabs, that'll open the floodgates in terms of energy and support from our members.

Occupation | Wrong |

Elihu Root

War was forced upon mankind in his original civil and social condition.

Bitterness | Suspicion | War | Wrong |