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

Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it.

Ideas | Means | Power |

William Law

He that rightly understands the reasonableness and excellency of charity will know that it can never be excusable to waste any of our money in pride and folly.

Envy | Life | Life | Means | Religion |

William Law

A rule that relates even to the smallest part of our life is of great benefit to us, merely as it is a rule.

God | Providence | Revelation | God |

William Matthews

The common idea that success spoils people making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.

Means | Men | Privilege |

William James

The militarily-patriotic and the romantic-minded everywhere, and especially the professional military class, refuse to admit for a moment that war may be a transitory phenomenon in social evolution. The notion of a sheep's paradise like that revolts, they say, our higher imagination. Where then would be the steeps of life? If war had ever stopped, we should have to re-invent it, on this view, to redeem life from flat degeneration.

Means |

William Law

Though the light and comfort of the outward world keeps even the worst men from any constant strong sensibility of that wrathful, fiery, dark and self-tormenting nature that is the very essence of every fallen unregenerate soul, yet every man in the world has more or less frequent and strong intimations given him that so it is with him in the inmost ground of his soul. How many inventions are some people forced to have recourse to in order to keep off a certain inward uneasiness, which they are afraid of and know not whence it comes? Alas, it is because there is a fallen spirit, a dark, aching fire, within them, which has never had its proper relief and is trying to discover itself and calling out for help at every cessation of worldly joy.

Devotion | Means | Piety | Spirit | Temper | Wisdom | World |

William James

The strenuous life tastes better.

Life | Life | Means | Memory | Thought | Thought |

William James

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate someone else’s type of thinking.

Awareness | Means | Awareness |

William Law

Reformation If it be the earnest desire and longing of your heart to be merciful as He is merciful; to be full of His unwearied patience, to dwell in His unalterable meekness; if you long to be like Him in universal, impartial love; if you desire to communicate every good to every creature that you are able; if you love and practice everything that is good, righteous, and lovely for its own sake, because it is good, righteous, and lovely; and resist no evil but with goodness; then you have the utmost certainty that the Spirit of God dwells and governs in you.

Day | Enjoyment | Good | Heart | Praise | Sense |

William James

The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.

Belief | Courage | Eternal | Light | Means | Nature | Need | Trust | Wisdom | World |

William Law

Let a clergyman but intend to please God in all his actions, as the happiest and best thing in the world, and then he will know that there is nothing noble in a clergyman but a burning zeal for the salvation of souls; nor anything poorer in his profession [than] idleness and a worldly spirit.

Future | Means | Nothing | Service | World | Value |

William (Morley Punshon) McFee

If we go back a little way in the history of story-writing, we shall find that, following on the unique success of Dickens as a serialist, a number of other men achieved a somewhat similar success without the greatness.

Fate | Good | Means | Fate |

William Law

It is much more possible for the sun to give out darkness than for God to do or be, or give out anything but blessing and goodness.

Idleness | Means | Method | Power | Spirit | Teach | Time | War | Circumstance |

William Matthews

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but they cease to love.

Enjoyment | Ideas |

William James

Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.

Anger | Earnestness | Energy | Fighting | Important | Little | Means | Nothing | Pain | People | Power | Self |

William James

Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.

Education | Failure | Ideas | Means | Mind | Nothing | Failure | Vicissitudes |

William James

Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.

Means | Property | Will |

William Law

Money we either lock up in chests, or waste it in needless and ridiculous expenses upon ourselves, whilst the poor and the distressed want it for necessary uses.

Enjoyment | Good | Life | Life | Wise | Blessed |

William Law

Unreasonable and absurd ways of life, whether in labour or diversion, whether they consume our time or our money, are like unreasonable and absurd prayers, and are as truly an offence to God.

God | Intention | Life | Life | Means | Power | God |

William Law

This useful, charitable, humble employment of yourselves is what I recommend to you with greatest earnestness, as being a substantial part of a wise and pious life.

Birth | God | Hell | Love | Nature | Nothing | Power | Spirit | Will | Wills | Work | God |