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

Architecture would lead us to all the arts, as it did with earlier mean: but if we despise it and take no note of how we are housed, the other arts will have a hard time of it indeed.

Death | Earth | Life | Life | Mirth | Pain | Past | Pleasure | Praise | Will |

William Morris

Of rich men it telleth, and strange is the story how they have, and they hanker, and grip far and wide And they live and they die, and the earth and its glory has been but a burden they scarce might abide.

Death | Heaven | Hell | Hope | Little | Past | Pleasure | Power | Words |

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

Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of defeat, and when it comes it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name

Imagination | Man | Men | Past |

William Morris

And the clouds fade above. Loved lips are thine as i tremble and hearken; bright thine eyes shine, though the leaves thy brow darken. O love, kiss me into silence, lest no word avail me, stay my head with thy bosom lest breath and life fail me! O sweet day, o rich day, made long for our love!

Change | Doubt | Fear | Past | Smile | Wonder |

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

Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?

Change | Past | Ugly |

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

Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy.

Future | Past | Present |

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

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

Future | Past | Present |

William Shakespeare

Now I stand as one upon a rock, environed with a wilderness of sea, who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, expecting ever when some envious surge will in his brinish bowels swallow him.

Past | Strength | Weakness |

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 sir, to wilful men the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.

Past |

William Shakespeare

O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade justice to break her sword. One more, one more! Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, and love thee after. One more, and that's the last! So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep, but they are cruel tears. This sorrow's heavenly; it strikes where it doth love. She wakes.

Heart | Memory | Observation | Past | Youth | Youth |

William Shakespeare

O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide! How couldst thou drain the lifeblood of the child, to bid the father wipe his eyes withal, and yet be seen to bear a woman's face? Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible; thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.

Men | Past |

William Shakespeare

Past and to come seems best, things present worst.

Past |

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 |

William Shakespeare

Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear I never more will break an oath with thee.

Man | Past |

Padmasambhava, literally "Lotus-Born",aka "Second Buddha", better known as Guru Rinpoche (lit. "Precious Guru") or Lopon Rinpoche NULL

May I recognize all the manifestations that appear to me in the bardo (intermediate state) as being my own projections; emanations of my own mind. When the bardo of the moment of death appears may I abandon attachments and mental fixations, and engage without distraction in the path which the instructions make clear. Mind projected into the sphere of uncreated space, separated from body, from flesh and blood, I will know that which is impermanence and illusion.

Future | Past | Present |

Elif Safak

The writer is to be selfish. And motherhood is based on the giving.

Eternity | Past | Time | World |