This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There are few virtuous women who are not bored with their trade.
Desire |
We often forgive those who bore us, but cannot forgive those we bore.
We should wish for few things with eagerness, if we perfectly knew the nature of that which was the object of our desire.
Desire |
The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.
Desire |
We need not be much concerned about those faults which we have the courage to own.
There are many women who never have had one intrigue; but there are few who have had only one.
Evil |
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
O, here will I set up my everlasting rest, and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Now will I stir this gamester: I hope I shall see an end of him: for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he. Yet he's gentle; never schooled and yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved; and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprised: but it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all: nothing remains but that I kindle the boy thither, which now I'll go about.
The business of conception is to present us with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived. But we have, moreover, a power of modifying our conceptions, by combining the parts of different ones together, so as to form new wholes of our own creation. I shall employ the word imagination to express this power, and I apprehend that this is the proper sense of the word, if imagination be the power which gives birth to the productions of the poet and the painter. The operations of imagination are by no means confined to the materials which conception furnishes, but may be equally employed about all the subjects of our knowledge.
When we enlarge upon the affection our friends have for us, this is very often not so much out of a sense of gratitude as from a desire to persuade people of our own great worth, that can deserve so much kindness.
Desire |
O, good old man, how well in thee appears The constant service of the antique world, When service sweat for duty, not for meed! Thou art not for the fashion of these times, Where none will sweat but for promotion. As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 3.
Were we to take as much pains to be what we ought to be as we do to disguise what we really are, we might appear like ourselves without being at the trouble of any disguise at all.
Desire |
Who lives without any madness, it is not so wise as he thinks.
Accident | Better | Desire | Fear | Reconciliation |
Whatever discoveries we may have made in the regions of self-love, there still remain many unknown lands.
Compensation | Evil | Good |
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 beware, my lord, jealousy is the green eye'd monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on.
Now all the youth of England are on fire, And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies; Now thrive the armorers, and honor's thought Reigns solely in the breast of every man.
Desire |
When we seek reconciliation with our enemies, it is commonly out of a desire to better our own condition, a being harassed and tired out with a state of war, and a fear of some ill accident which we are willing to prevent.
Desire | Gratitude | Tenderness | Friends |