This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
As by your high imperial majesty I had in charge at my depart for France, as procurator to your excellence, to marry Princess Margaret for your grace, so, in the famous ancient city Tours, in presence of the Kings of France and Sicil, the Dukes of Orleans, Calabar, Bretagne, and Alencon, seven earls, twelve barons, and twenty reverend bishops, I have performed my mask and was espoused. Henry VI, Act I, Scene 1
Abundance | Books | Ceremony | Fear | Heart | Love | Rage | Recompense | Strength | Learn |
AMIENS: What's that 'ducdame'? JAQUES: 'Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle.
Desire |
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more. Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think, few come within the compass of my curse,— wherein I did not some notorious ill, as kill a man, or else devise his death, ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it, accuse some innocent and forswear myself, set deadly enmity between two friends, make poor men's cattle break their necks; set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night, and bid the owners quench them with their tears. Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves, and set them upright at their dear friends' doors, even when their sorrows almost were forgot; and on their skins, as on the bark of trees, have with my knife carved in Roman letters, 'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.' Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things as willingly as one would kill a fly, and nothing grieves me heartily indeed but that I cannot do ten thousand more. Titus Andronicus, Act v, Scene 1
Soul |
By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death ... and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next. Henry IV, Part II, Act iii, Scene 2
But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep in the affliction of these terrible dreams that shake us nightly. Macbeth, Act iii, Scene 2
But man, proud man, drest in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he’s most assur'd; his glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep. Measure for Measure. Act ii. Sc. 2.
Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth finds the down pillow hard.
Bonos dies, Sir Toby; for, as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, 'That that is is'; so, I, being Master Parson, am Master Parson; for what is 'that' but that, and 'is' but is?
Doubly porcullis'd with my teeth and lips; and dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance is made my gaoler to attend on me. I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, too far in years to be a pupil now; what is thy sentence then but speechless death which robs my tongue from breathing native breath? Richard II, Act i, Scene III
Gall |
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 |
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
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
Now I know that so long as we have social inequality we shall have snobs; we shall have men who bully and truckle, and women who snub and crawl. I know that it is futile to, spurn them, or lash them for trying to get on in the world, and that the world is what it must be from the selfish motives which underlie our economic life.
Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon. It can so often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight; its string can so often depart and turn into a relish when, after vainly seeking to shun it, we agree to face about and bear it . . .
Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things.
Evil | Good | Man | Melancholy | Reality | Thought | Happiness | Thought |