This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord, that would reduce these bloody days again and make poor England weep in streams of blood! Let them not live to taste this land's increase that would with treason wound this fair land's peace! Now civil wounds are stopped, peace lives again: that she may long live here, God say amen! Richard III, Act v, Scene 5
A good wit will make use of anything. I will turn diseases to commodity. Henry IV, Act i, Scene 2
And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil-- By telling truth. Tell truth and shame the devil. If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither, And I'll be sworn I have power to shame him hence. O, while you live, tell truth and shame the devil! Henry IV, Part I, Act iii, Scene 1
Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud, else would I tear the cave where Echo lies and make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine with repetition of "My Romeo!"
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.
Captain of our fairy band, Helena is here at hand, and the youth, mistook by me, pleading for a lover's fee. Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be!
O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
Age | Chance | Disease | Good | Habit | Hate | Life | Life | Little | Luxury | People | Thinking | Time | Will | Learn | Think |
There is at present in the world a cold reserve that keeps man at a distance from man. There is an art in the practice of which individuals communicate forever, without anyone telling his neighbor what estimate he forms of his attainments and character, how they ought to be employed, and how to be improved. There is a sort of domestic tactics, the object of which is to elude curiosity, and keep up the tenor of conversation, without the disclosure either of our feelings or opinions. The friend of justice will have no object more deeply at heart than the annihilation of this duplicity. The man whose heart overflows with kindness for his species will habituate himself to consider, in each successive occasion of social intercourse, how that occasion may be most beneficently improved. Among the topics to which he will be anxious to awaken attention, politics will occupy a principal share.
Art | Chance | Circumstances | Degeneracy | Discovery | History | Imagination | Important | Improvement | Literature | Observation | Past | Philosophy | Practice | Superstition | Will | Discovery | Art |
I will now confess my own utopia. I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the gradual advent of some sort of socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic view of the war function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due to definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise. And when whole nations are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in intellectual refinement with the science of production, I see that war becomes absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity. Extravagant ambitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations must make common cause against them.
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. . . . it is only an inveterate habit -- the habit of inferiority to our full self.
History | Philosophy | Will | Think |
What are the precise characteristics of an epigram it is not easy to define. It differs from a joke, in the fact that the wit of the latter dies in the words, and cannot therefore be conveyed in another language; while an epigram is a wit of ideas, and hence is translatable. Like aphorisms, songs and sonnets, it is occupied with some single point, small and manageable; but whilst a song conveys a sentiment, a sonnet, a poetical, and an aphorism a moral reflection, an epigram expresses a contrast.
Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.
Chance | Genius | Individual | Men | Mystery | People | Public | Inertia |