This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The fortunate circumstances of our lives are generally found, at last, to be our own producing.
There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains.
Age | Despise | Men | Miracles | Past | Prejudice | Will | Truths |
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects... The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society... The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed, and that the relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.
Circumstances | Man | Means | Nature | Society |
One of the drawbacks of old age is that one outlives his generation and feels alone in the world. The new generations have interests of their own, and are no more in sympathy with you than you are with them. The octogenarian has no alternative but to live in the past. He lives with the dead, and they pull him down.
John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstances with which they cannot contend.
Circumstances | Ideas |
John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
Regulatory bodies, like the people who comprise them, have a marked life cycle. In youth they are vigorous, aggressive, evangelistic, and even intolerant. Later they mellow, and in old age – after a matter of ten or fifteen years – they become, with some exceptions, either an arm of the industry they are regulating or senile.
Age | Industry | Life cycle | Life | Life | Old age | People | Youth | Youth | Old |
Age alway ough to be a myrrour for youth, for where olde age is impudent, there certainly youth must needes be shamlesse.
When circumstances change, I change my view; what do you do?
Change | Circumstances |
There are perhaps some circumstances of life in which Providence has no intention that people should be content.
Circumstances | Intention | Life | Life | People | Providence |
The real advantage which truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such a head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
Circumstances | Opinion | Time | Truth | Will |
One age cannot be completely understood if all the others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole.
Our true reality is in our identity and unity with all life. This is a metaphysical truth which may become spontaneously realized under circumstances of crisis.
Customs are made for customary circumstances and customary characters... The mind itself is bowed to the yoke; even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they live in crowds: they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have not nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own.
Choice | Circumstances | Conduct | Conformity | Eccentricity | Feelings | Growth | Mind | Nature | Peculiarity | People | Pleasure | Taste | Thought | Wishes | Following | Thought |