This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A shrewd man has to arrange his interests in order of importance and deal with them one by one; but often our greed upsets this order and makes us run after so many things at once that through over-anxiety to obtain the trivial, we miss the most important.
Civility is but a desire to receive civility, and to be esteemed polite.
Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
Desire |
The happiness and unhappiness of men depend as much on their turn of mind as on fortune.
Desire |
We easily forget our faults when they are known only to ourselves.
Desire |
The excessive pleasure we feel in talking of ourselves, ought to make us apprehensive that we afford little to our hearers.
Desire |
There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.
Desire |
We should wish for few things with eagerness, if we perfectly knew the nature of that which was the object of our desire.
Desire |
The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.
Desire |
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
The business of conception is to present us with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived. But we have, moreover, a power of modifying our conceptions, by combining the parts of different ones together, so as to form new wholes of our own creation. I shall employ the word imagination to express this power, and I apprehend that this is the proper sense of the word, if imagination be the power which gives birth to the productions of the poet and the painter. The operations of imagination are by no means confined to the materials which conception furnishes, but may be equally employed about all the subjects of our knowledge.
When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.
Desire |
Were we to take as much pains to be what we ought to be as we do to disguise what we really are, we might appear like ourselves without being at the trouble of any disguise at all.
Desire |
Who lives without any madness, it is not so wise as he thinks.
Accident | Better | Desire | Fear | Reconciliation |
When we exaggerate the tenderness of our friends towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own merit.
Now all the youth of England are on fire, And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies; Now thrive the armorers, and honor's thought Reigns solely in the breast of every man.
Desire |
When we seek reconciliation with our enemies, it is commonly out of a desire to better our own condition, a being harassed and tired out with a state of war, and a fear of some ill accident which we are willing to prevent.
Desire | Gratitude | Tenderness | Friends |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
From the vaikrita form of individuation proceeds the eleven-fold set characterized by goodness (sattva); from the bhutadi form of individuation proceed the subtle elements (tanmatras). In this, darkness (tamas) dominates. Both of these proceed from taijasa ahankara, in which rajas dominates.
A man of letters is often a man with two natures,--one a book nature, the other a human nature. These often clash sadly.