This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A man of understanding finds less difficulty in submitting to a wrong-headed fellow, than in attempting to set him right.
Mass Media will respond that media issues are of great importance because they impact the public trust in news organizations. This ignores the fact that most people already believe Mass Media either makes stuff up, is biased one way or the other, or constantly gets information wrong. Finding out that journalists sometimes invent stories just confirms their preexisting viewpoint.
Innovation | Security | Sense | Survival | Thinking | Will | Loss |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
What did you say, Arthur? I said, how the hell did you get here? I was a row of dots flowing randomly through the Universe. Have you met Thor? He makes thunder. Hello, said Arthur. I expect that must be very interesting. Hi, said Thor, it is.
Avarice is more opposite to economy than liberality.
We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions.
Common Sense | Sense |
Man speak but little when vanity does not induce them to speak.
We do not despise all those who have vices, but we despise all those who have not a single virtue.
We have all of us sufficient fortitude to bear the misfortunes of others.
O sovereign mistress of true melancholy, the poisonous damp of night disponge upon me, that life, a very rebel to my will, may hang no longer on me. Throw my heart against the flint and hardness of my fault, which, being dried with grief, will break to powder and finish all foul thoughts. O Antony, nobler than my revolt is infamous, forgive me in thine own particular, but let the world rank me in register a master-leaver and a fugitive.
Sense |
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.
O thou who dost inhabit in my breast; Leave not the mansion so long tenantless; Lest growing ruinous the building fall, And leave no memory of what it was.
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!
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.
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 |