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 of our own producing.
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater, and causing a panic… The question in every case is whether the words used are in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
Circumstances | Danger | Free speech | Man | Nature | Panic | Present | Question | Right | Speech | Will | Words | Danger |
Power to preserve under all circumstances the right, lawful opinion of what is and is not to be feared.
Circumstances | Opinion | Wise |
A young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts.
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
Age | Entertainment | Religion |
The experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet.
Age | Experience | Waiting | World |
Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages; they wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them!
Age | Learning | Life | Life | Poverty | Power | Rank | Respect | Riches | Soul | Thought | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Respect | Thought |
Let me consider this as a resolution by which I pledge myself to act in all variety of circumstances and to which I must recur often in times of carelessness and temptation – to measure my conduct by the rule of conscience.
Circumstances | Conduct | Conscience | Resolution | Rule | Temptation | Temptation |
In failing circumstances no man can be relied on to keep his integrity.
Circumstances | Integrity | Man |
What is the matter with the world that it is so out of joint? Simply that men do not rule themselves but let circumstances rule them.
Circumstances | Men | Rule | World |
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Change | Character | Circumstances |
We see processes like love and education as established circumstances rather than as complex temporal organisms whose lives depend on regular nourishment and renewal.... Like still cameras, our minds consistently convert motion into stasis.
Circumstances | Education | Love |
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
It is a blessed thing that in every age someone has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.
Age | Convictions | Courage | Enough | Individuality | Blessed |
Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be... those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes... those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober -- minded men.
Associates | Circumstances | Control | Day | Good | Pleasure | Success | Thinking | Wise |
Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
The failure of the mind in old age is often less the results of natural decay, than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment bring indolence, and indolence decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy.
Age | Ambition | Contentment | Death | Disease | Ennui | Failure | Indolence | Men | Mind | Old age | Power | Ambition | Failure | Old |