This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When we pray, we should feel the seriousness of speaking directly to the Almighty. The concept of seriousness should not be mistaken for sadness since sadness is a transgression. Seriousness should stem from the true joy of fulfilling a mitzvah [biblical law or good deed], the joy of having the merit to pray to the Almighty.
Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof
Real sorrow is almost as difficult to discover as real poverty. An instinctive delicacy hides the rays of the one and the wounds of the other.
Madame Swetchine, fully Anne Sophie Swetchine née Sophia Petrovna Soïmonov or Soymanof
Pride dries the tears of anger and vexation; humility, those of grief. The one is indignant that we should suffer; the other calms us by the reminder that we deserve nothing else.
Anger | Character | Grief | Humility | Nothing | Pride | Tears |
Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
If there is an evil in this world, it is sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, of healthy, of coronets and mitres, is only evil as they occasion sorrow; take that out, the rest is fancy, and dwelleth only in the head of man.
Character | Evil | Heart | Man | Rest | Sorrow | World | Loss |
What a power has Death to awe and hush the voices of this earth! How mute we stand when that presence confronts us, and we look upon the silence he has wrought in a human life! We can only gaze, and bow our heads, and creep with our broken stammering utterances under the shelter of some great word which God has spoken, and in which we see through the history of human sorrow the outstretching and overshadowing of the eternal arms.
Awe | Death | Earth | Eternal | God | History | Life | Life | Power | Silence | Sorrow | Wisdom | God |
A man's sorrow runs uphill; true it is difficult for him to bear, but it is also difficult for him to keep.
If you trap the moment before it's ripe, the tears of repentance you'll certainly wipe; but if once you let the ripe moment go you can never wipe off the tears of woe.
Repentance | Tears | Wisdom | Woe |
Eugene P. Bertin, fully Eugene Peter Bertin
Honest work bears a lovely face for it is the father of pleasure and the mother of good fortune. It is the keystone of prosperity and the sire of fame. And best of all, work is relief from sorrow and the handmaiden of happiness.
Fame | Father | Fortune | Good | Mother | Pleasure | Prosperity | Sorrow | Wisdom | Work |
To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. As a man is, so he sees.
To some people a tree is something so incredibly beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes. To others it is just a green thing that stands in the way.
Active natures are rarely melancholy. Activity and sadness are incompatible.
Melancholy | Sadness | Wisdom |