This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.
D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence
What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another... Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom... The world fears a new experience more than it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences... the world doesn't fear a new idea. It can pigeonhole any idea. It can't pigeon-hole a new experience.
Experience | Fear | Freedom | Genius | Laughter | Man | Men | Wisdom | World | Old |
Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few, and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods.
I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) German Philosopher, Socialist and Friedrich Engels
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. By modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
Waste not your strength trying to push shut doors which God is opening. Neither wear yourself out in keeping open doors which ought to be forever sealed. Some episode in your life, over which you are anxious, is closed. it is in the past. Whatever its memory, you cannot change it. But you can shut the door. Go into some silent place of thought. Test your self-respect. Ask your soul, "Have I emerged from this experience with honor, or if not, can honor be retrieved?" And if your soul answers, "Yes," close then the door to that Past; hang a garland over the portal if you will, but come away without tarrying. The east is aflame with the radiance of the morning, and before you stands many another door, held open by the hand of God.
Change | Experience | God | Honor | Life | Life | Memory | Past | Respect | Self | Soul | Strength | Thought | Waste | Will | Wisdom | God |
It is an established opinion among some men that there are in the understanding certain innate principles, some primary notions, stamped, as it were, upon the mind of man which the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world with it. It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness of this supposition, if I should only show how many men obtain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any such innate impressions... Let us suppose the mind to be a blank tablet; how comes it to be furnished? To this answer in one word, from experience.
Experience | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Opinion | Principles | Soul | Understanding | Wisdom | World |
Politicians tend to live "in character," and many a public figure has come to imitate the journalism which describes him.
Although generalizations are dangerous, I venture to say that at the bottom of most fears, both mild and severe, will be found an overactive mind and an underactive body. Hence, I have advised many people, in their quest for happiness, to use their heads less and their arms and legs more... in useful work or play. We generate fears while we sit; we overcome them in action. Fear is nature's warning signal to get busy.
Action | Body | Fear | Mind | Nature | People | Play | Warning | Will | Wisdom | Work |
The suppression of civil liberties is to many less a matter for horror than the curtailment of the freedom to profit.
Freedom | Suppression | Wisdom |
Samuel David Luzzatto, aka by acronym of SHaDaL or SHeDaL
Society's preservation and man's happiness depend on illusion. Nature itself, which certainly represents the will of God, deludes us in many respects, as when it leads us by the cords of love to reproduce the race. If a youth would consider the trouble in rearing a family, not one in a thousand would marry, but nature closes our eyes to the future (and indeed, wherever popular knowledge rises, the birth rate declines). The same is true of the other passions, which nature utilizes to deceive man and goad them toward the attainment of ends which, when attained, turn out to be but vanity.
Attainment | Birth | Ends | Family | Future | God | Illusion | Knowledge | Love | Man | Nature | Race | Society | Will | Wisdom | Youth | Youth | Trouble | Happiness |
Martial, full name Marcus Valarius Martialis NULL
Fortune gives many too much, but none enough.
Love is like a charming romance which is read with avidity, and often with such impatience that many pages are skipped to reach the denouement sooner.
Impatience | Love | Romance | Wisdom |
The institutions of a country depend in great measure on the nature of its soil and situation. Many of the wants of man are awakened or supplied by these circumstances. To these wants, manners, laws, and religion must shape and accommodate themselves. The division of land, and the rights attached to it, alter with the soil; the laws relating to its produce, with its fertility. The manners of its inhabitants are in various ways modified by its position. The religion of a miner is not the same as the faith of a shepherd, nor is the character of the ploughman so war-like as that of the hunter. The observant legislator follows the direction of all these various circumstances. the knowledge of the natural advantages or defects of a country thus form an essential part of political science and history.
Character | Circumstances | Defects | Faith | History | Knowledge | Land | Man | Manners | Nature | Position | Religion | Rights | Science | Wants | War | Wisdom |
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, aka "Pat"
Liberty and Equality are the twin ideals of American democracy. But they are not the same thing... Many person who would gladly die for liberty are appalled by equality. Many who are devoted to equality are puzzled and even troubled by liberty. Much of the political history of the American nation can be seen as a competition between these two ideals.
Competition | Democracy | Equality | History | Ideals | Liberty | Wisdom |