This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
Against my will, I became a witness to the most terrible defeat of reason and to the most savage triumph of brutality ever chronicled ... never before did a generation suffer such a moral setback after it had attained such intellectual heights.
As society advances the standard of poverty rises.
History | Mother | Treason | Infidelity |
Wealth and want equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive nature away from the heart of man.
History | Mother | Treason | Infidelity |
I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it.
Abstract | Blessings | Consolation | Esteem | Government | Regret | Sacrifice | Suicide | Treason | Will | Government | Happiness |
The firmness with which the people have withstood the late abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false, and to form a correct judgment between them.
Character | Death | Good | Law | Mercy | Murder | Object | Power | Public | Security | Time | Treason | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Murder |
A traveler must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing
Good | Little | Simplicity | Treason |
Who nothing has to lose, the war bewails; and he who nothing pay, at taxes rails.
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
Innocence seldom utters outraged shrieks. Guilt Does.
Treason |
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
Out of that vision of Almighty Man that we call Communism and that agony of souls and bodies that we call the revolution of the 20th century was left that pinch of irreducible dust: “Who pays is boss, and who takes money must also give something.” It might stand as the motto of every welfare philosophy.
Hope | Individual | Man | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Treason |
Abba, dark death is the breaking of a glass. The dazzled flakes and splinters disappear. The seal is as relaxed as dirt, Perdu.
Malice |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
One of the great differences between childhood and manhood is that we come to like our work more than our play. It becomes to us if not the chief pleasure at least the chief interest of our lives, and even when it is not this, an essential condition of our happiness. Few lives produce so little happiness as those that are aimless and unoccupied. Apart from all considerations of right and wrong, one of the first conditions of a happy life is that it should be a full and busy one, directed to the attainment of aims outside ourselves....the first great rule is that we must do something – that life must have a purpose and an aim – that work should be not merely occasional and spasmodic, but steady and continuous. Pleasure is a jewel which will only retain its luster when it is in a setting of work, and a vacant life is one of the worst of pains, though the islands of leisure that stud a crowded, well-occupied life may be among the things to which we look back with the greatest delight.
Death | Disrespect | Punishment | Question | Treason |
The man who can see is a scholar; the man who can walk is a person with experience.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
The unknown, said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion. ... Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, unpredictable, inevitable -- the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?