This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.
It is more important to listen to questions than to answer them. To listen with full intent, with full openness, with a genuine desire to understand not the question only, but the question behind the question, and to be at one with the questioner - this is an engagement very difficult.
Character | Desire | Important | Openness | Question | Engagement | Understand |
Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgments as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should condemn a criminal upon the account of his own choler; why then should fathers and pedants be any more allowed to whip and chastise children in their anger? It is then no longer correction but revenge. Chastisement is instead of physic to children; an should we suffer a physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient?
Anger | Character | Children | Death | Men | Passion | Revenge | Right |
The office of the moral law is that of a pedagogue, to protect and educate us in the use of freedom. At the end of this period of instruction, we are enfranchised from every servitude, even from the servitude of law, since Love made us one in spirit with the wisdom that is the source of Law.
Character | Freedom | Law | Love | Moral law | Office | Servitude | Spirit | Wisdom |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
On the one hand, we may tell the truth, regardless of consequences, and on the other hand we may mellow it and sophisticate it to make it humane and tolerable.
Character | Consequences | Truth |
Pietro Metastasio, aka Metastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi
Every noble acquisition is attended with its risks; he who fears to encounter the one must not expect to obtain the other.
Alberto Moravia, Pen name of Alberto Pincherle
Modern man - whether in the womb of the masses, or with his workmates, or with his family, or alone - can never for one moment forget that he is living in a world in which he is a means and whose end is not his business.