This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The Romans assisted their allies and friends, and acquired friendships by giving rather than receiving kindness." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL
"Pleasures are not, if they last; in their passing is their best: glory is more bright and gay in a flash, and so away." - Samuel Daniel
"The sciences are said, and they are truly said, to have a mutual connection, that any one of them may be the better understood for an insight into the rest." - Samuel Horsley
"Alas! another instance of the triumph of hope over experience." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Every man ought to aim at eminence, not by pulling others down, but by raising himself; and enjoy the pleasures of his own superiority, whether imaginary or real, without interrupting others in the same felicity." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Without economy none can be rich, and with it few will be poor. [Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.]" - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man may clothe himself, - the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired. One of Pythagoras's wisest maxims is that in which lie enjoins the pupil to "reverence himself."" - Samuel Smiles
"The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"Anyone who denies the crimes and genocide of the past is opening up the way for the murders of the future." - Simon Wiesenthal
"As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"The living together for three long, rainy days in the country has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps
"Quoting son, Noah Levine: Once you see what the heart really needs, it doesn’t matter if you’re going to live or die; the work is always the same." - Stephen Levine
"Hitherto every civilization that has arisen has been able to develop only a comparatively few activities; that is, its field of endeavor has been limited in kind as well as in locality. There have, of course, been great movements, but they were of practically only one form of activity; and, although usually this set in motion other kinds of activities, such was not always the case. The great religious movements have been the pre-eminent examples of this type. But they are not the only ones. Such peoples as the Mongols and the Phoenicians, at almost opposite poles of cultivation, have represented movements in which one element, military or commercial, so overshadowed all other elements that the movement died out chiefly because it was one-sided. The extraordinary outburst of activity among the Mongols of the thirteenth century was almost purely a military movement, without even any great administrative side; and it was therefore well-nigh purely a movement of destruction. The individual prowess and hardihood of the Mongols, and the perfection of their military organization rendered their armies incomparably superior to those of any European, or any other Asiatic, power of that day. They conquered from the Yellow Sea to the Persian Gulf and the Adriatic; they seized the imperial throne of China; they slew the Caliph in Bagdad; they founded dynasties in India. The fanaticism of Christianity and the fanaticism of Mohammedanism were alike powerless against them. The valor of the bravest fighting men in Europe was impotent to check them. They trampled Russia into bloody mire beneath the hoofs of their horses; they drew red furrows of destruction across Poland and Hungary; they overthrew with ease any force from western Europe that dared encounter them. Yet they had no root of permanence; their work was mere evil while it lasted, and it did not last long; and when they vanished they left hardly a trace behind them. So the extraordinary Phoenician civilization was almost purely a mercantile, a business civilization, and though it left an impress on the life that came after, this impress was faint indeed compared to that left, for instance, by the Greeks with their many-sided development. Yet the Greek civilization itself fell because this many-sided development became too exclusively one of intellect, at the expense of character, at the expense of the fundamental qualities which fit men to govern both themselves and others. When the Greek lost the sterner virtues, when his soldiers lost the fighting edge, and his statesmen grew corrupt, while the people became a faction-torn and pleasure-loving rabble, then the doom of Greece was at hand, and not all their cultivation, their intellectual brilliancy, their artistic development, their adroitness in speculative science, could save the Hellenic peoples as they bowed before the sword of the iron Roman." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"No people is fully civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"A man's perfection is his work." - Thomas Carlyle
"When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted." - Thomas Paine
"The Worship of God - It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend. The man who permits you to injure him deserves your vengeance; He also will receive it. Go, Spectre! obey my most secret desire, Which thou knowest without my speaking. Go to these Friends of Righteousness, Tell them to obey their Humanities, and not pretend Holiness, When they are murderers. As far as my Hammer and Anvil permit, Go tell them that the Worship of God is honouring His gifts In other men, and loving the greatest men best, each according To his Genius, which is the Holy Ghost in Man: there is no other God than that God who is the intellectual fountain of Humanity. He who envies or calumniates, which is murder and cruelty, Murders the Holy One. Go tell them this, and overthrow their cup, Their bread, their altar-table, their incense, and their oath, Their marriage and their baptism, their burial and consecration. I have tried to make friends by corporeal gifts, but have only Made enemies; I never made friends but by spiritual gifts, By severe contentions of friendship, and the burning fire of thought. He who would see the Divinity must see Him in His Children, One first in friendship and love, then a Divine Family, and in the midst Jesus will appear. So he who wishes to see a Vision, a perfect Whole, Must see it in its Minute Particulars, organized; and not as thou, O Fiend of Righteousness, pretendest! thine is a disorganized And snowy cloud, brooder of tempests and destructive War. You smile with pomp and rigour, you talk of benevolence and virtue; I act with benevolence and virtue, and get murder’d time after time; You accumulate Particulars, and murder by analysing, that you May take the aggregate, and you call the aggregate Moral Law; And you call that swell’d and bloated Form a Minute Particular. But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars; and every Particular is a Man." - William Blake
"''I have no name:'' I am but two days old. ''What shall I call thee?'' I happy am, ''Joy is my name.'' sweet joy befall thee!" - William Blake
"Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt." - William Cobbett
"All has its date below; the fatal hour was register'd in heav'n ere time began. We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works die too." - William Cowper
"To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy." - Will and Ariel Durant
"There's a great big beautiful tomorrow, just a dream away." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave: there are no voices, O Rhodopè! that are not soon mute, however tuneful: there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last." - Walter Savage Landor
"The river of human life meanders along, through many a valley, leaps over many a cliff, loses itself in many a marsh and seeks to empty itself in the ocean of Divine Grace; though, what happens is that it falls into the undrinkable expanse of salt." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda
"They use baths, and moreover they have warm ones according to the Roman custom, and they make use also of olive oil. They have found out, too, a great many secret cures for the preservation of cleanliness and health. And in other ways they labor to cure the epilepsy, with which they are often troubled." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
"If we are but fixed and resolute – bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled spectre ships, which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind."" - Tryon Edwards
"We shall fight for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"You do have a modicum of peace of mind here, but it's as unsettled as any other place." - Todd Rundgren, fully Todd Harry Rundgren
"Remember, we do not mount the pulpit to say fine things, or eloquent things, we have there to proclaim the good tidings of salvation to fallen men; to point out the way of eternal life; to exhort, to cheer and support the suffering sinner; these are the glorious topics upon which we have to enlarge -- and will these permit the tricks of oratory, or the studied beauties of eloquence? Shall truths and counsels like these be couched in terms which the poor and ignorant cannot comprehend? Let all eloquent preachers beware lest they fill any man's ear with sounding words, when they should be feeding his soul with the bread of everlasting life! -- Let them fear lest instead of honouring God, they honour themselves! If any man ascend the pulpit with the intention of uttering A Fine Thing, he is committing a deadly sin." - William Gouge
"All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it." - William James
"What lasting progress was ever made in social reformation, except when every step was insured by appeals to the understanding and the will?" - William Matthews
"It is easy to be pleasant when life flows by like a song, but the man worthwhile is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is trouble, and it always comes with years, and the smile that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through the tears." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"What riches are ours in the world of nature, from the majesty of the distant peak to the fragile beauty of a tiny flower, and all without cost to us, the beholders! No person is poor who has watched a sunrise or who keeps a mountain in his or her heart. " - Esther Baldwin York
"It can be a bit overwhelming, but it's a great overview of the conversations taking place in and around Africa." - Ethan Zuckerman
"But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while they still endure for eyes to see, are ever their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"The Romans assisted their allies and friends, and acquired friendships by giving rather than receiving kindness." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL
"Pleasures are not, if they last; in their passing is their best: glory is more bright and gay in a flash, and so away." - Samuel Daniel
"The sciences are said, and they are truly said, to have a mutual connection, that any one of them may be the better understood for an insight into the rest." - Samuel Horsley
"Alas! another instance of the triumph of hope over experience." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Every man ought to aim at eminence, not by pulling others down, but by raising himself; and enjoy the pleasures of his own superiority, whether imaginary or real, without interrupting others in the same felicity." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Without economy none can be rich, and with it few will be poor. [Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.]" - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man may clothe himself, - the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired. One of Pythagoras's wisest maxims is that in which lie enjoins the pupil to "reverence himself."" - Samuel Smiles