This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Blind is his love and best befits the dark. Romeo and Juliet, Act ii, Scene 1
CAMILLO: Prosperity's the very bond of love, whose fresh complexion and whose heart together affliction alters. PERDITA: One of these is true: I think affliction may subdue the cheek, but not take in the mind.
Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair? Or rather do I not in plainest truth tell you I do not nor I cannot love you? A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act iv, Scene 2
It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.
Absolute | Action | Feelings | Impression | Judgment | Man | Reason | Sacred | Sense | Understanding | Intellect |
Every man has a certain sphere of discretion, which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbors. This right flows from the very nature of man. First, all men are fallible: no man can be justified in setting up his judgment as a standard for others. We have no infallible judge of controversies; each man in his own apprehension is right in his decisions; and we can find no satisfactory mode of adjusting their jarring pretensions. If everyone be desirous of imposing his sense upon others, it will at last come to be a controversy, not of reason, but of force. Secondly, even if we had an in fallible criterion, nothing would be gained, unless it were by all men recognized as such. If I were secured against the possibility of mistake, mischief and not good would accrue, from imposing my infallible truths upon my neighbor, and requiring his submission independently of any conviction I could produce in his understanding. Man is a being who can never be an object of just approbation, any further than he is independent. He must consult his own reason, draw his own conclusions and conscientiously conform himself to his ideas of propriety. Without this, he will be neither active, nor considerate, nor resolute, nor generous.
Appearance | Assertion | Darkness | Destroy | Lesson | Means | Neglect | Nothing | Public | Reason | Security |
Do not borrow, do not lend, because both lent money would already friends, both of them will be lost. Moreover borrowing dulls the sense of prudence. Measure for Measure, Act v, Scene 1
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids Seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou know'st 'tis common. All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity. Hamlet, Act i, Scene 2
Obey this may be right but beware of reverence. Government is nothing but regulated force force is its appropriate claim upon your attention. It is the business of individuals to persuade the tendency of concentrated strength, is only to give consistency and permanence to an influence more compendious than persuasion.
The execution of anything considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.
Nor is it a valid objection to say "that, by such a rule, we are making every man a judge in his own case." In the courts of morality it cannot be otherwise; a pure and just system of thinking admits not of the existence of any infallible judge to whom we can appeal. It might indeed be further objected "that, by this rule, men will be called upon to judge in the moment of passion and partiality, instead of being referred to the past decisions of their cooler reason." But this also is an inconvenience inseparable from human affairs. We must and ought to keep our selves open, to the last moment, to the influence of such considerations as may appear worthy to influence us. To teach men that they must not trust their own understandings is not the best scheme for rendering them virtuous and consistent. On the contrary, to inure them to consult their understanding is the way to render it worthy of becoming their director and guide.
Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do.
Abstract | Common Sense | Difficulty | Discussion | Duty | Imagination | Pacifism | Rationality | Reason | Sense | Utopia | Think |
But such a straight identification of religion with any and every form of happiness leaves the essential peculiarity of religious happiness out. The more commonplace happinesses which we get are 'reliefs,' occasioned by our momentary escapes from evils either experienced or threatened. But in its most characteristic embodiments, religious happiness is no mere feeling of escape. It cares no longer to escape. It consents to the evil outwardly as a form of sacrifice — inwardly it knows it to be permanently overcome. ... In the Louvre there is a picture, by Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his foot on Satan's neck. The richness of the picture is in large part due to the fiend's figure being there. The richness of its allegorical meaning also is due to his being there — that is, the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
Day | Death | Insight | Little | Man | Method | Mind | Patience | Psychology | Style | Success | Superiority | Tenacity | Thought | Uncertainty | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Thought |
But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.
Psychology | Reason |
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
The conqueror is regarded with awe the wise man commands our respect but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection