This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
O God that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away they brains ! that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!
Our bad neighbor makes us early stirrers, which is both healthful and good husbandry.
Order |
PANDARUS: Well, well! Why, have you any discretion? Have you any eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man? CRESSIDA: Ay, a minc'd man; and then to be bak'd with no date in the pie, for then the man's date is out.
Playing in the wanton air: through the velvet leaves the wind all unseen, gan passage find; that the lover, sick to death, wish'd himself the heaven's breath, 'air,' quoth he, 'thy cheeks may blow; air, would I might triumph so! But, alas! My hand hath sworn ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn: vow, alack! For youth unmeet: youth, so apt to pluck a sweet. Do not call it sin in me that I am forsworn for thee thou for whom Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiope were; turning mortal for thy love.
Order |
Or I shall live your epitaph to make, or you survive when I in earth am rotten; from hence your memory death cannot take, although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortal life shall have, though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
Sense |
Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment
Common Sense | Object | Sense | Old | Vice |
It may be said that the supreme revelation is to be found in Jesus Christ and that all the rest of the Bible leads up to him. Yet there are two ways of accepting the words and example of Jesus. One is to take what he says as true because he says it, and another is to believe it because it stands the test of reflection and experience. When his way of life has been confirmed by the demands of intelligence and of practical life, it has gained the deepest security and made its strongest claims upon our loyalty.
Association | Change | Divinity | Ideas | Life | Life | Nature | People | Psychology | Sense | Sin | Strength | Association |
Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is an humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.
Enough | Genius | Men | Nations | Thought | Govern | Thought |
The weak sinews become strong by their conflict with difficulties. - Hope is bom in the long night of watching and tears. - Faith visits us in defeat and disappointment, amid the consciousness of earthly frailty and the crumbling tombstones of mortality.
Dong Zhongshu, aka Dǒng Zhòngshū or Tung Chung-shu
All phenomena are intricately and dynamically interrelated.
Cleanliness | Devotion | Love | Order | Gossip |
Prince Shōtoku, born Shotoku Taishi, aka Prince Umayado or Prince Kamitsumiya
To subordinate private interests to the public good--that is the path of a vassal. Now if a man is influenced by private motives, he will be resentful, and if he is influenced by resentment he will fail to act harmoniously with others. If he fails to act harmoniously with others, the public interest will suffer. Resentment interferes with order and is subversive of law.
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
Among these, the five organs of cognition are concerned with specific and non-specific objects. Speech is concerned with sound; the rest are concerned with all five objects.
Prince Shōtoku, born Shotoku Taishi, aka Prince Umayado or Prince Kamitsumiya
Decisions on important matters should not be made by one person alone. They should be discussed with many people. Small matters are of less consequence and it is unnecessary to consult a number of people. It is only in the case of important affairs, when there is a suspicion that they may miscarry, that one should consult with others, so as to arrive at the right conclusion.
Circumstances | Law | Man | Will |
We have overdeveloped the individualism that arose in a pioneer country. We are destined to become more co-operative, more collectivistic, and to find in this direction still greater opportunity for the individual, not so much restricted and defeated by competition but enlarged and enhanced by the support of a common will. It may be that the problem of material goods--of the necessary but yet external goods of food, clothing, shelter, and money-is about to be solved through new discoveries and developments, with the energies of men left freer than they have ever been to cultivate on higher levels the sharable goods of life, such as love and wisdom. These values grow with use and multiply by being freely shared.
Business | Church | Defiance | God | Isolation | Knowledge | Organic | Sense | Society | Society | Business | God | Old |
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
An attendant came up, bowing deeply. The white flowers far off yonder are known as 'evening faces, he said. A very human sort of name--and what a shabby place they have picked to bloom in.It was as the man said. The neighborhood was a poor one, chiefly of small houses. Some were leaning precariously, and there were evening faces at the sagging eaves. A hapless sort of flower. Pick one off for me, will you? The man went inside the raised gate and broke off a flower. A pretty little girl in long, unlined yellow trousers of raw silk came out through a sliding door that seemed too good for the surroundings. Beckoning to the man, she handed him a heavily scented white fan. Put it on this. It isn't much of a fan, but then it isn't much of a flower either.
Man | Order | Public | Resentment | Will |
When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the people of Tibet will be scattered like ants across the world and the dharma will come to the land of the red man.
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
Well, we never expected this! they all say. No one liked her. They all said she was pretentious, awkward, difficult to approach, prickly, too fond of her tales, haughty, prone to versifying, disdainful, cantankerous, and scornful. But when you meet her, she is strangely meek, a completely different person altogether! How embarrassing! Do they really look upon me as a dull thing, I wonder? But I am what I am.
Attention | Beginning | Enlightenment | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Nothing | Order | People | Wishes | World | Old |
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
If husband and wife have the habit of staying together, never leaving one another, and following each other around within the limited space of their own rooms, then they will lust after and take liberties with one another. From such action improper language will arise between the two This kind of discussion may lead co licentiousness. But of licentiousness will be born a heart of disrespect to the husband. Such a result comes from not knowing that one should stay in one's proper place.
Authority | Conduct | Control | Husband | Men | Nothing | Order | Purpose | Purpose | Relationship | Wife |
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
Let a woman retire late to bed, but rise early to duties; let her nor dread tasks by day or by night. Let her not refuse to perform domestic duties whether easy or difficult. That which must be done, let her finish completely, tidily, and systematically, When a woman follows such rules as these, then she may be said to be industrious.
Character | Love | Order | Principles | Purity | Woman | Gossip |