This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Red Jacket, aka Sagoyewatha NULL
But an evil day came upon us. Your forefathers crossed the great waters and landed on this island. Their numbers were small. They found friends and not enemies. They told us they had fled from their own country for fear of wicked men, and had come here to enjoy their religion. They asked for a small seat. We took pity on them, granted their request, and they sat down amongst us. We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison in return.
Red Skelton, fully Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton
Exercise? I get in on the golf course. When I see my friends collapse, I run for the paramedics.
Friends |
Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
Forget your enemies. It's your friends you frustrate that cause all the problems.
Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
Your friends will know you better in the first minute they meet you than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
It is proper to observe, that even in this sense of our country, that love of it which is our duty, does not imply any conviction of the superior value of it to other countries, or any particular preference of its laws and constitution of government. Were this implied, the love of their country would be the duty of only a very small part of mankind; for there are few countries that enjoy the advantage of laws and governments which deserve to be preferred. To found, therefore, this duty on such a preference, would be to found it on error and delusion. It is however a common delusion. There is the same partiality in countries, to themselves, that there is in individuals. All our attachments should be accompanied, as far as possible, with right opinions. We are too apt to confine wisdom and virtue within the circle of our own acquaintance and party. Our friends, our country, and, in short, everything related to us, we are disposed to overvalue. A wise man will guard himself against this delusion. He will study to think of all things as they are, and not suffer any partial effections to blind his understanding. In other families there may be as much worth as in our own. In other circles of friends there may be as much wisdom; and in other countries as much of all that deserves esteem; but, notwithstanding this, our obligation to love our own families, friends, and country, and to seek, in the first place, their good, will remain the same.
Acquaintance | Duty | Error | Love | Man | Obligation | Partiality | Preference | Right | Sense | Study | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wisdom | Wise | Worth | Friends | Think | Value |
When two friends understand each other totally, the words are soft and strong like an orchid's perfume
Words | Friends | Understand |
Richard Chenevix, fully Richard Chenevix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin
Best friends might loathe us, if what things perverse we know of our own selves they also knew.
Friends |
It has been one of my difficulties, in arguing this question out of doors with friends or strangers, that I rarely find any intelligible agreement as to the object of the war.
Even sticking to the higher plane of love, is it so very obvious that you can't love more than one person? We seem to manage it with parental love (parents are reproached if they don't at least pretend to love all their children equally), love of books, of food, of wine (love of Chateau Margaux does not preclude love of a fine Hock, and we don't feel unfaithful to the red when we dally with the white), love of composers, poets, holiday beaches, friends . . . why is erotic love the one exception that everybody instantly acknowledges without even thinking about it?
The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun which conveys the unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. Mimeme comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosylable that sounds a bit like gene. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme.
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
In particular, [my mother] had a wonderful sense of humor, and I learned from her that the highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
Laughter | Sense | Understanding |
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing
Adventure | Ends | Experience | History | Laughter | Life | Life | Majority | Man | Mystery | Sense | Universe | Understand |
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons, and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.
Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans
The swift passing of the seasons brings all of us at time to think upon the length of life, as friends and loved ones come and leave, and as we ourselves face always such uncertainties. Not one of us knows how long he will live, how long his loved ones will live. "No one can be ignorant that he must die," said Cicero, "nor be sure that he may not this very day." But beyond all this -- beyond all fretting, worrying, and brooding about the length of life -- there is evidence everywhere to quiet our hearts, to give us peace and faith for the future, and assurances that we can count on. Spring returned again this year. We knew it would -- and it did. And just so surely as all this, life has purpose, plan, and pattern that includes eternal continuance with loved ones waiting. And with all sorrows, loss of loved ones, loneliness, there is this that we may know: That in a universe which runs so well, the Power who runs it well is that same Power who knows each human heart, and quiets and softens sorrow, and gives assurances we so much seek, as each day brings its undisclosed events. We come; we live; we leave. Our loved ones leave -- but we and they live always and forever. Don't fret. Don't doubt. Don't cling to grieving. Don't fight life, or give up, or brood, or be bitter and rebellious, or let go of faith in the future. All of us know loneliness; all of us search ourselves, and ask for answers. Trust Him, who has done so much so well, to do all things well. Trust Him to bring peace and comfort and quietness and assurance to your soul inside. "Once more the Heavenly Power makes all things new." (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Early Spring"). This you can count on.
Comfort | Day | Eternal | Evidence | Faith | Life | Life | Lord | Peace | Power | Quiet | Search | Soul | Time | Trust | Universe | Will | Loss | Friends | Think |
Only in the theatre was it possible to see the performers and to be warmed by their personal charm, to respond to their efforts and to feel their response to the applause and appreciative laughter of the audience. It had an intimate quality; audience and actors conspired to make a little oasis of happiness and mirth within the walls of the theatre. Try as we will, we cannot be intimate with a shadow on a screen, nor a voice from a box.
Old friends become bitter enemies on a sudden for toys and small offenses.
Friends |
All are friends in heaven, all faithful friends, And many friendships in the days of Time Begun, are lasting there and growing still.
Friends |
Roland B. Gittelsohn, fully Roland Bertram Gittelsohn
This is the grimmest, and surely the holiest task we have faced since D–day. Here before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends. Men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us. Men who were on the same ships with us, and went over the side with us as we prepared to hit the beaches of this island.It is not easy to do so,” He continued. Some of us have buried our closest friends here. We saw these men killed before our very eyes. Any one of us might have died in their place. Indeed some of us are alive and breathing at this very monent only because men who lie here beneath us had the courage and strength to give their lives for ours. To speak in memory of men such as these is not easy . . . No, our poor power of speech can add nothing to what these men and the other dead of our Division who are not here have already done. All we can even hope to do is follow their example. To show the same selfless courage in peace as they did in war. To swear by the grace of God and the stubborn strength and power of human will, their sons and ours will never suffer these pains again. These men have done their job well. They have paid the ghastly price of freedom. . . . “We dedicate ourselves, first, to live together in peace the way they fought and are buried in this war. Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor--- together . . . . Theirs is the highest and purest democracy. Any man among us, the living, who fails to understand that will thereby betray those who lie here dead. Whoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother . . . . makes of this ceremony and of the bloody sacrifice it commemorates an empty, hollow mockery. To one thing more do we consecrate ourselves in memory of those who sleep beneath these crosses and stars. We shall not foolishly suppose, as did the last generation of America’s fighting men, that victory on the battlefield will automatically guarantee the triumph of Democracy at home. This war with all its frightful heartache and suffering, is but the beginning of our generations struggle for democracy . . . . Thus do we memorialize those who, have ceased living with us, now live within us. Thus do we consecrate ourselves, the living, to carry on the struggle they began. Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth on which we stand. We here solemnly swear: This shall not be in vain! Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come—we promise – the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.
Beginning | Birth | Ceremony | Courage | Democracy | Earth | Fighting | Freedom | God | Guarantee | Hate | Hope | Man | Memory | Men | Mourn | Nothing | Pain | Peace | Power | Price | Sacrifice | Sorrow | Speech | Strength | Struggle | War | Will | God | Blessed | Friends | Understand |
Yitzhak Shamir, born Icchak Jaziernicki
Of all hands in the world, it was not the hand that I wanted or dreamed of touching, ... We, the soldiers who have returned from battle stained with blood, we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes, we who have attended their funerals and cannot look into the eyes of their parents, we who have come from a land where parents bury their children, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians - we say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough. ...The time for peace has come.