This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.
Merit |
Whilst you are divided betwixt God and the world, you have neither the pleasures of Religion, nor the pleasures of the world, but are always in the uneasiness of a divided state of heart. You have only so much Religion as serves to disquiet you, to show you a handwriting on the wall, to interrupt your pleasures, and to appear as a death's-head at all your feasts, but not Religion enough to give you a taste and feeling of its pleasures. You dare not wholly neglect Religion, but then you take no more than is just sufficient to keep you from being a terror to yourself, and you are as loth to be very good as you are fearful to be very bad.
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in.
Absolute | Ambition | Blush | Education | Feelings | Honor | Individual | Men | Pride | Question | Race | Reason | Right | Shame | System | Time | Worth | Ambition | Old |
There is no wrath that stands between God and us, but what is awakened in the dark fire of our own fallen nature; and to quench this wrath, and not His own, God gave His only begotten Son to be made man. God has no more wrath in Himself now than He had before the creation, when He had only Himself to love... And it was solely to quench this wrath, awakened in the human soul, that the blood of the Son of God was necessary; because nothing but a life and birth, derived from Him into the human soul, could change this darkened root of a self-tormenting fire into an amiable image of the Holy Trinity as it was at first created.
A man does not please long when he has only species of wit.
Man | Merit | Misfortune | Will | Misfortune |
Eloquence lies as much in the tone of the voice, in the eyes, and in the speaker's manner, as in his choice of words.
Merit |
The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy.
There is an eloquent silence which serves to approve or to condemn: there is a silence of discretion and of respect.
Merit |
There is a season for man's merit as well as for fruit.
Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
One is never as fortunate or as unfortunate as one thinks.
Honor |
Our probity is not less at the mercy of fortune than our property.
Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.
There are people who, like new songs, are in vogue only for a time.
People who think they can live mean penance others lie to ourselves, but those who think other people cannot live without him be wrong again.
The mind cannot long play the heart's role.
Merit |
Inclination is another word with which will is frequently confounded. Thus, when the apothecary says, in Romeo and Juliet,— “My poverty, but not my will, consents; Take this and drink it off; the work is done.†the word will is plainly used as synonymous with inclination; not in the strict logical sense, as the immediate antecedent of action. It is with the same latitude that the word is used in common conversation, when we think of doing a thing which duty prescribes, against one’s own will; or when we speak of doing a thing willingly or unwillingly.
Acquaintance | Attainment | Books | Correctness | Grace | Language | Lying | Men | Merit | Purity | Reading | Style | Taste | Writing |
O that estates, degrees, and offices Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honor Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
Merit |
Our rash faults Make trivial price of serious thing we have, Not knowing them until we know their grave. All's Well That Ends Well (King of France at V, iii)