This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
DON PEDRO: To be merry best becomes you; for, out o' question, you were born in a merry hour. BEATRICE: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under than was I born. Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii, Scene 1
With what a heavy and retarding weight does expectation load the wing of time.
O thrush, your song is passing sweet but never a song that you have sung,is half so sweet as thrushes sang when my dear Love and I were young.
Late February days; and now, at last, might you have thought that Winter's woe was past; so fair the sky was and so soft the air.
Of France and England, did this king succeed; whose state so many had the managing. That they lost France and made his England bleed.
One that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning.
Once, he kissed me. I loved my lips the better ten days after: would he would do so every day!
Let us not fear that the issues of natural science shall be scepticism or anarchy. - Through all God's works there runs a beautiful harmony. - The remotest truth in his universe is linked to that which lies nearest the throne.
Sorrow |
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome.
Sorrow |
So smooth he daubed his vice with show of virtue that, his apparent open guilt omitted-- I mean, his conversation with Shore's wife-- He lived from all attainder of suspects. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (King Richard at III, v)
As I got older, I discovered that nothing within me cried out for a baby. My womb did not seem to have come equipped with that famously ticking clock. Unlike so many of my friends, I did not ache with longing whenever I saw an infant. (Though I did ache with longing, it is true, whenever I saw a good used-book shop)
Contentment | Distress | Focus | Friend | Global | Search | Sorrow | Suffering | Unhappiness | World | Trouble |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Dreams of doing good for good-for-nothing people.
All perfect things are saddening in effect. The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes, the matchless tinting on the royal rose whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked. Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows, these hold a deeper pathos than our woes, since they leave nothing better to expect.
Day | Fate | Love | Play | Sorrow | Yielding | Fate | Friendship |
Why then should money be blamed for all the dirt and crimes it causes? For is love less filthy - love which creates life?
Sorrow |
Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.
Body | Earth | Fear | Glory | Life | Life | Man | Morality | Pain | Religion | Self-denial | Sorrow | Soul | Struggle |
The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief... So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.