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 Gouge

Remember, we do not mount the pulpit to say fine things, or eloquent things, we have there to proclaim the good tidings of salvation to fallen men; to point out the way of eternal life; to exhort, to cheer and support the suffering sinner; these are the glorious topics upon which we have to enlarge -- and will these permit the tricks of oratory, or the studied beauties of eloquence? Shall truths and counsels like these be couched in terms which the poor and ignorant cannot comprehend? Let all eloquent preachers beware lest they fill any man's ear with sounding words, when they should be feeding his soul with the bread of everlasting life! -- Let them fear lest instead of honouring God, they honour themselves! If any man ascend the pulpit with the intention of uttering A Fine Thing, he is committing a deadly sin.

Abundance | Desire | God | Love | Man | Object | Providence | Riches | Will | Words | World | Riches | God |

William James

If we take the universe of fitting, countless coats fit backs, and countless boots fit feet, on which they are not practically fitted; countless stones fit gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions fit realities, and countless truths are valid, tho' no thinker ever thinks them.

Existence | Little | System | Words | Understand |

William Law

Perhaps it may he found more easy to forget the language than to part entirely with those tempers which we learnt in misery.

Evil | Heart | Power | Prayer | Strength | Weakness | Words |

William Law

Covetousness, pride, and envy are not three different things, but only three different names for the restless workings of one and the same will or desire. Wrath, which is a fourth birth from these three, can have no existence till one or all of these three are contradicted, or have something done to them that is contrary to their will. These four properties generate their own torment. They have no outward cause, nor any inward power of altering themselves. And therefore all self or nature must be in this state until some supernatural good comes into it, or gets a birth in it. Whilst man indeed lives among the vanities of time, his covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath may be in a tolerable state, may hold him to a mixture of peace and trouble; they may have at times their gratifications as well as their torments. But when death has put an end to the vanity of all earthly cheats, the soul that is not born again of the Supernatural Word and Spirit of God, must find itself unavoidably devoured and shut up in its own insatiable, unchangeable, self-tormenting covetousness, envy, pride, and wrath.

Desire | God | Heart | Inspiration | Man | Nothing | Prayer | Spirit | Words | God | Old |

William James

The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.

Mind | Study | Words |

William James

They conquer who believe they can. He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.

Belief | Life | Life | Will | Words | Worth | Afraid |

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

O surely this morning all sorrow is hidden, all battle is hushed for this even at least; and no one this noontide may hunger, unbidden to the flowers and the singing and the joy of your feast where silent ye sit midst the world's tale increased.

Troubles | Words |

William Morris

God made the country, man made the town, and the Devil made the suburbs.

Day | Enough | Grief | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Will | Words |

William Morris

Join hope to our hope and blend sorrow with sorrow,And seek for men's love in the short days of life.

Experience | Important | Words | Understand |

William Morris

Live on, for love liveth, and earth shall be shaken by the wind of his wings on the triumphing morning, when the dead, and their deeds that die not shall awaken, and the world's tale shall sound in your trumpet of warning, and the sun smite the banner called scorn of the scorning, and dead pain ye shall trample, dead fruitless desire, as ye wend to pluck out the new world from the fire.

Words |

Douglas William Jerrold

In this world truth can wait; she is used to it.

People | Play | Words | World |

William Shakespeare

O teach me how I should forget to think.

Words |

William Shakespeare

O, call back yesterday, did time return, And thou shalt have twelve thousand fighting men! To-day, to-day, unhappy day too late, O'erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune, and thy state; For all the Welshmen, hearing thou wert dead, Are gone to Bolingbroke, dispersed, and fled.

Attention | Ends | Men | Music | Taste | Truth | Words | Youth | Youth |

William Shakespeare

O, such a day, So fought, so followed, and so fairly won, Came not till now to dignify the times, Since Caesar's fortunes!

Words |

William Shakespeare

O, what a world of vile ill-favored faults Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year. The Merry Wives of Windsor (Anne Page at III, iv)

Conscience | Cunning | Defeat | Devil | Father | Force | Gall | Heart | Heaven | Life | Life | Murder | Oppression | Passion | Play | Power | Property | Revenge | Soul | Spirit | Tears | Weakness | Will | Words | Murder | Guilty |

William Shakespeare

O, let her brother live: Thieves for the robbery have authority When judges steal themselves. Measure for Measure (Angelo at II, ii)

Love | Words | Old |

William Shakespeare

Please you, I'll tell you as we pass along, That you will wonder what hath fortuned. Come, Proteus, 'tis your penance but to hear The story of your loves discovered; That done, our day of marriage shall be yours: One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.

Heart | Words |

Edwin Percy Whipple

A large portion of human beings live not so much in themselves as in what they desire to be. - They create an ideal character the perfections of which compensate in some degree for imperfections of their own.

Immortality | Instinct | Life | Life | Words |

Edwin Percy Whipple

A writer who attempts to live on the manufacture of his imagination is continually coquetting with starvation.

Earth | Thought | Words | Thought |