This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
ALONSO: Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these? SEBASTIAN: A living drollery. Now I will believe that there are unicorns; that in Arabia there is one tree, the phoenix' throne, one phoenix at this hour reigning there. ANTONIO: I'll believe both; and what does else want credit, come to me, and I'll be sworn 'tis true; travellers ne'er did lie, though fools at home condemn 'em. The Tempest, Act iii, Scene 3
Comedy |
And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days.
Tragedy |
And men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper. Love's Labour 's Lost. Act i. Sc. 1.
Comedy |
And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say every why hath a wherefore. The Comedy of Errors (Dromio of Syracuse at II, ii)
Tragedy |
Appear thou in the likeness of sigh; Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied! Cry but 'Ay me! pronounce but 'love' and 'dove': Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word, One nickname for her purblind son and heir Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so true When King Cophetus loved the beggar maid! Romeo and Juliet, Act ii, Scene 1
But to my mind, — though I am native here and to the manner born, — it is a custom more honour'd in the breach than the observance. Hamlet, Act i, Scene 4
Boys | Experience | Pleasure | Present | Time |
But there is no such man; for, brother, men can counsel and speak comfort to that grief which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it, their counsel turns to passion, which before would give preceptial medicine to rage, fetter strong madness in a silken thread, charm ache with air and agony with words. Much Ado About Nothing, Act v, Scene 1
By the Lord, thou say'st true, lad--and is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench? PRINCE HENRY: As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle--and is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance? Henry IV, Part I, Act 1
Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. Julius Caesar, Act ii, Scene 2
Daniel Gilbert, fully Daniel Todd Gilbert, aka Professor Happiness
Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.
Cause | Experience | Pleasure |
Discomfortable cousin! know'st thou not that when the searching eye of heaven is hid behind the globe, that lights the lower world, then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen in murders and in outrage boldly here; but when from under this terrestrial ball he fires the proud tops of the eastern pines and darts his light through every guilty hole, then murders, treasons, and detested sins, the cloak of night being plucked from off their backs, stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves? Richard II, Act iii, Scene 2
Cut him out in little stars. Romeo and Juliet, Act iii, Scene 2
William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
Now the science conversant about all such inferences of unknown being from its known manifestations, is called ontology, or metaphysics proper.