This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defense. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries.
Absence | Accuracy | Aid | Coincidence | Cost | Desire | History | Knowledge | Labor | Partiality | Past | Romance | Trust |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
My faith is whatever makes me feel good about being alive. If your religion doesn't make you feel good to be alive, what the hell is the point of it?
Desire | Fulfillment |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
If God had a bumper sticker, it would probably read: SHINE, DON'T WHINE.
Desire |
Adultery? Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery? No. The wren goes to 't, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester's bastard son was kinder to his father than my daughters got 'tween the lawful sheets. To 't, luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers. King Lear, Act iv, Scene 6
Persuasion | Praise | Words |
Allow not nature more than nature needs. King Lear, Act ii, Scene 4
AMIENS: What's that 'ducdame'? JAQUES: 'Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle.
Desire |
Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth finds the down pillow hard.
Boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit grows melancholy? Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act I, Scene 2
Praise |
Doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot ensure in his age. Much Ado About Nothing, Act ii, Scene 3
Desire |
Remember, we do not mount the pulpit to say fine things, or eloquent things, we have there to proclaim the good tidings of salvation to fallen men; to point out the way of eternal life; to exhort, to cheer and support the suffering sinner; these are the glorious topics upon which we have to enlarge -- and will these permit the tricks of oratory, or the studied beauties of eloquence? Shall truths and counsels like these be couched in terms which the poor and ignorant cannot comprehend? Let all eloquent preachers beware lest they fill any man's ear with sounding words, when they should be feeding his soul with the bread of everlasting life! -- Let them fear lest instead of honouring God, they honour themselves! If any man ascend the pulpit with the intention of uttering A Fine Thing, he is committing a deadly sin.
Abundance | Desire | God | Love | Man | Object | Providence | Riches | Will | Words | World | Riches | God |
Justifying faith is not a naked assent to the truths of the gospel.
What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness; with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.
Praise |