This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
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 |
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 |
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 |
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?
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
They knew that their anarchism was the product of a very high civilization, of a complex diversified culture, of a stable economy and a highly industrialized technology that could maintain high production and rapid transportation of goods. However vast the distances separating settlements, they held to the ideal of complex organicism.
Children | Despair | Evil | Happy | Pain | People | Praise | Treason | Trouble | Happiness |
After my death I wish no other herald, No other speaker of my living actions, To keep mine honour from corruption, But such an honest chronicler as Griffith. King Henry VIII. Act iv. Sc. 2.
And to make us no better thought of, a little help will serve; for once we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck not to call us the many-headed multitude. Coriolanus, Act ii, Scene 3
DUNCAN. This castle hath a pleasant seat: the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses. BANQUO: The heaven's breath smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, buttress, nor coigne of vantage, but this bird hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, the air is delicate. Macbeth, Act i, Scene 6
O conspiracy, sham'st thou to show thy dang'rous brow by night, when evils are most free? O then, by day where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough to mask thy monstrous visage?
Treason |
Our life is short, but to expand that span to vast eternity is virtue's work.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath; a goodly apple rotten at the heart!
Treason |
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind! The thief doth fear each bush an officer. King Henry the Sixth, Part III (Gloucester at V, vi)
Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to rust in us unused. Hamlet, Act iv, Scene 4
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
I have no desire to make windows into men’s souls
Have you ever reflected that posterity may not be the faultless dispenser of justice that we dream of? One consoles oneself for being insulted and denied, by reyling on the equity of the centuries to come; just as the faithful endure all the abominations of this earth in the firm belief of another life, in which each will be rewarded according to his deserts. But suppose Paradise exists no more for the artist than it does for the Catholic, suppose that future generations prolong the misunderstanding and prefer amiable little trifles to vigorous works! Ah! What a sell it would be, eh? To have led a convict's life - to have screwed oneself down to one's work - all for a mere delusion! Bah! What does it matter? Well, there's nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman. When the earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won't add one atom to its dust.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
First of all, Theodore Roosevelt and Charles W. Fairbanks, candidates for President and Vice-President, respectively, deny the class struggle and this almost infallibly fixes their status as friends of capital and enemies of labor. They insist that they can serve both; but the fact is obvious that only one can be served and that one at the expense of the other. Mr. RooseveltÂ’s whole political career proves it.