This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
As the poet has expected, the alarms now are sounded, for - and it must be said again - the birth of a poet is always a threat to the existing cultural order, because he attempts to break through the circle of literary castes to reach the center.
My opinion is that we require no more Commissions, no more Sage investigators. What we want is action, and we want it immediately. We want a Department of Labor established, with a Secretary at its head, who shall have a seat in the President's cabinet, and that man to be a man who knows what Labor is, not only from a theoretical standpoint, but from the practical standpoint. . . . I hope you will do your utmost to see that such a Department is established, and let us get away from the puny vacillating system of unnecessary excuses by referring matters to irresponsible Commissions, from which no permanent and beneficial results ensue.
Absolute | Desire | Experience | Failure | Men | Necessity | People | Progress | Reason | Receive | Success | Failure |
The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
Democracy | Desire | Fighting | Force | Peace | Principles | Spirit | Understanding | War | World |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
Sam Walton, fully Samuel Moore "Sam" Walton
Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.
Desire | Experience | Work |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.
Body | Desire | Force | Intemperance | Man | Present | Thought | Thought |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The greatest events may be often traced back to slender causes.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The prosperity of a people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a gangrene, and idleness is an atrophy. Whatever body or society wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay; and every jeing that continues to be fed, and ceases to labor, takes away something from the public stock.
Desire | Imagination | Present | Time |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Keeping accounts, Sir, is of no use when a man is spending his own money, and has nobody to whom he is to account. You won't eat less beef today, because you have written down what it cost yesterday.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Some men relate what they think, as what they know; some men of confused memories, and habitual inaccuracy, ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and some talk on without thought or care. A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.
Praise |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Such is our desire of abstraction from ourselves, that very few are satisfied with the quantity of stupefaction which the needs of the body force upon the mind. Alexander himself added intemperance to sleep, and solaced with the fumes of wine the sovereignty of the world. And almost every man has some art, by which he steals his thought away from his present state.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Were a man not to marry a second time, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife, he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.
Desire | Diligence | Disease | Envy | Money | Nothing | Regard | Respect | Torture | Wealth | Wise | Respect | Value |
An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.
Desire | Passion | Race | Righteousness |
Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL
Being conscious of the eternal self, one should give up association with women and those intimately associated with women. Sitting fearlessly in a solitary place, one should concentrate the mind on Me with great attention.
Anger | Desire | Fear | Friendship |