This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"It is only in solitude, when it has broken the thick crust of shame that separates us from one another and separates us all from God, that we have no secrets from God; only in solitude do we raise our hearts to the Heart of the Universe; only in solitude does the redeeming hymn of supreme confession issue from our soul." - Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
"A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his causes." - Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
"The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone. " - Milan Kundera
"What is man? A creature of dust; a thing of transience whose days fly by faster than a weaver's shuttle; a fragile being crushed sooner than a moth; a body, sustaining and reproducing itself after the fashion of the beast; a vessel filled with shame and confusion, impelled by pride and self-love, driven by passions." - Milton Steinberg
"It’s such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it." - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
"One token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another." - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"For it is not ordained for the Spiritual Man that, finding his high realm, he shall enter altogether there, and pass out of the vision of mankind. It is true that he dwells in heaven, but he also dwells on earth. He has angels and archangels, the hosts of the just made perfect, for his familiar friends, but he has at the same time found a new kinship with the prone children of men, who stumble and sin in the dark. Finding sinlessness, he finds also that the world’s sin and shame are his, not to share, but to atone; finding kinship with angels, he likewise finds his part in the toil of angels, the toil for the redemption of the world. " - Patañjali NULL
"The "Help Wanted" signs are everywhere. All people and institutions, including commerce, governments, schools, churches, and cities, need to learn from life and reimagine the world from the bottom up, based on first principles of justice and ecology. Ecological restoration is extraordinarily simple: You remove whatever prevents the systems from healing itself. Social restoration is no different. We have the heart, knowledge, money, and sense to optimize our social and ecological fabric. It is time for all that is harmful to leave. One million escorts are here to transform the nightmares of empire and the disgrace of war on people and place. We are the transgressors and we are the forgivers. "We" means all of us, everyone. There can be no green movement unless there is also a black, brown, and copper movement. What is most harmful resides within us, the accumulated wounds of the past, the sorrow, shame , deceit, and ignominy shared by every culture, passed down to every person, as surely as DNA, a history of violence, and greed. There is no question that the environmental movement is critical to our survival. Our house is literally burning, and it is only logical that environmentalists expect the social justice movement to get on the environmental bus. But it is the other way around; the only way we are going to put out the fire is to get on the social justice bus and heal our wounds, because in the end, there is only one bus" - Paul Hawken
"McLuhanism and the media have broken the back of the book business; they've freed people from the shame of not reading. They've rationalized becoming stupid and watching television." - Pauline Kael
"Rabbi Elazar of Modiim said: “If a man profanes things which are sacred, and offends the holidays and puts his fellow to shame publicly, and makes void the covenant of Abraham our father, and teaches meanings in the Torah which are not according to Halachah, even though he has a knowledge of the Torah and good works, he has no share in the world to come.”" - Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
"Compassion and shame come over one who considers how precarious is the origin of the proudest of living beings: often the smell of a lately extinguished lamp is enough to cause a miscarriage. And to think that from such a frail beginning a tyrant or butcher may be born! You who trust in your physical strength, who embrace the gifts of fortune and consider yourself not their ward but their son, you who have a domineering spirit, you who consider yourself a god as soon as success swells your breast, think how little could have destroyed you!" - Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL
"A cause breaks or exalts a soldier's strength; unless that cause is just, shame will make him throw his weapons away." - Propertius, fully Sextus Propertius NULL
"Many [hooligans] discover to their shame that they have scruples; they have roots and, greatest disadvantage of all, they have hope. The fathers superior of the order do not try to influence their children in Satan; they merely shake their heads in sorrow. They know that the apostate must work out his own damnation." - Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt
"Look: the trees exist; the houses we dwell in stand there stalwartly. Only we pass by it all, like a rush of air. And everything conspires to keep quiet about us, half out of shame perhaps, half out of some secret hope." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"Never rebuke a man in such a way as to shame him in public." - Rashi, born Shlomo ben Yitzchok, aka Salomon Isaacides, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki NULL
"Have charity; have patience; have mercy. Never bring a human being, however silly, ignorant, or weak--above all, any little child--to shame and confusion of face. Never by petulance, by suspicion, by ridicule, even by selfish and silly haste--never, above all, by indulging in the devilish pleasure of a sneer--crush what is finest and rouse up what is coarsest in the heart of any fellow-creature." - Charles Kingsley
"The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudoscientific charlatans. It is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realize that before you die you have the opportunity of understanding an immense amount about that world and about that universe and about life and about why we're here. We have the opportunity of understanding far, far more than any of our predecessors ever. That is such an exciting possibility, it would be such a shame to blow it and end your life not having understood what there is to understand." - Richard Dawkins
"The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realize that before you die you have the opportunity of understanding an immense amount about that world and about that universe and about life and about why we're here. We have the opportunity of understanding far, far more than any of our predecessors ever. That is such an exciting possibility, it would be such a shame to blow it and end your life not having understood what there is to understand." - Richard Dawkins
"A nightingale dies for shame if another bird sings better." - Robert Burton
"My Library - Like prim Professor of a College I primed my shelves with books of knowledge; And now I stand before them dumb, Just like a child that sucks its thumb, And stares forlorn and turns away, With dolls or painted bricks to play. They glour at me, my tomes of learning. You dolt! they jibe; you undiscerning Moronic oaf, you make a fuss, With highbrow swank selecting us; Saying: I'll read you all some day' - And now you yawn and turn away. Unwanted wait we with our store Of facts and philosophic lore; The scholarship of all the ages Snug packed within our uncut pages; The mystery of all mankind In part revealed - but you are blind. You have no time to read, you tell us; Oh, do not think that we are jealous Of all the trash that wins your favour, The flimsy fiction that you savour: We only beg that sometimes you Will spare us just an hour or two. For all the minds that went to make us Are dust if folk like you forsake us, And they can only live again By virtue of your kindling brain; In magic print they packed their best: Come - try their wisdom to digest… Said I: Alas! I am not able; I lay my cards upon the table, And with deep shame and blame avow I am too old to read you now; So I will lock you in glass cases And shun your sad, reproachful faces. My library is noble planned, Yet in it desolate I stand; And though my thousand books I prize, Feeling a witling in their eyes, I turn from them in weariness To wallow in the Daily Press. For, oh, I never, never will The noble field of knowledge till: I pattern words with artful tricks, As children play with painted bricks, And realize with futile woe, Nothing I know - nor want to know. My library has windowed nooks; And so I turn from arid books To vastitude of sea and sky, And like a child content am I With peak and plain and brook and tree, Crying: Behold! the books for me: Nature, be thou my Library! " - Robert Service, fully Robert William Service
"My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns; Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns; The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals; The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls." - Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
"LOVE'S SERVILE LOT - LOVE, mistress is of many minds, Yet few know whom they serve ; They reckon least how little Love Their service doth deserve. The will she robbeth from the wit, The sense from reason's lore ; She is delightful in the rind, Corrupted in the core. She shroudeth vice in virtue's veil, Pretending good in ill ; She offereth joy, affordeth grief, A kiss where she doth kill. A honey-shower rains from her lips, Sweet lights shine in her face ; She hath the blush of virgin mind, The mind of viper's race. She makes thee seek, yet fear to find To find, but not enjoy : In many frowns some gliding smiles She yields to more annoy. She woos thee to come near her fire, Yet doth she draw it from thee ; Far off she makes thy heart to fry, And yet to freeze within thee. She letteth fall some luring baits For fools to gather up ; Too sweet, too sour, to every taste She tempereth her cup. Soft souls she binds in tender twist, Small flies in spinner's web ; She sets afloat some luring streams, But makes them soon to ebb. Her watery eyes have burning force ; Her floods and flames conspire : Tears kindle sparks, sobs fuel are, And sighs do blow her fire. May never was the month of love, For May is full of flowers ; But rather April, wet by kind, For love is full of showers. Like tyrant, cruel wounds she gives, Like surgeon, salve she lends ; But salve and sore have equal force, For death is both their ends. With soothing words enthralled souls She chains in servile bands ; Her eye in silence hath a speech Which eye best understands. Her little sweet hath many sours, Short hap immortal harms ; Her loving looks are murd'ring darts, Her song bewitching charms. Like winter rose and summer ice, Her joys are still untimely ; Before her Hope, behind Remorse : Fair first, in fine unseemly. Moods, passions, fancy's jealous fits Attend upon her train : She yieldeth rest without repose, And heaven in hellish pain. Her house is Sloth, her door Deceit, And slippery Hope her stairs ; Unbashful Boldness bids her guests, And every vice repairs. Her diet is of such delights As please till they be past ; But then the poison kills the heart That did entice the taste. Her sleep in sin doth end in wrath, Remorse rings her awake ; Death calls her up, Shame drives her out, Despairs her upshot make. Plough not the seas, sow not the sands, Leave off your idle pain ; Seek other mistress for your minds, Love's service is in vain." - Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
"Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV, it's a shame more people don't switch over to it." - Robert M. Pirsig
"Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,— Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,— Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;" - Sidney Lanier
"There is no end to the journey will end, never end... how beloved heart ever stop to open? ‘If you love me’ - he said – ‘There is only one to die. At any moment you will die in me, to be born again." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
"You try to be faithful and sometimes you're cruel. You are mine. Then, you leave. Without you, I can't cope. And when you take the lead, I become your footstep. Your absence leaves a void. Without you, I can't cope. You have disturbed my sleep, you have wrecked my image. You have set me apart. Without you, I can't cope." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
"I define charity as a motion of the soul whose purpose is to enjoy God for His own sake and one’s self and one’s neighbor for the sake of god. Lust, on the other hand is a motion of the soul bent upon enjoying one’s self, one’s neighbor, and any creature without reference to God." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
"There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
"Do not approach the words of the mysteries contained in the divine Scriptures without prayer and beseeching God for help, but say: Lord, grant me to perceive the power in them! Reckon prayer to be the key to the true understanding of the divine Scriptures." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
"It is a spiritual gift from God for a man to perceive his sins." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL
"I feel so strongly about the truths Our Lord taught us by word and example that I cannot help but see how everything done according to that teaching always succeeds perfectly well, while things done the" - Saint Vincent de Paul
"You can't judge an internal injury by the size of the hole." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
"Discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"In traveling: a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"I only feel better because people aren't being so abusive to me about my weight." - Sinéad O’Connor, fully Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor
"But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
"From the eternal azure serene irony Overwhelms, indolently as beautiful flowers, the poet who curses his genius powerless through a barren desert of pain. Fleeing, eyes closed, I feel it looks with the intensity of a remorse appalling, my empty soul, flee Where? And what a night haggard Jeter, shreds, throw contempt on this sad? Fog, get in! Put your ashes monotonous With long rags of mist in heaven who drown livid marsh autumns and build a large ceiling quiet! And you, get out of ponds léthéens and picks you coming in the pale mud and reeds, Dear Boredom to butcher one hand never tired bleux The large holes that do wickedly birds. Encor! that relentlessly sad chimneys Active smokers, and one of errant jail soot off the horror of his black streaks sun is dying yellowish on the horizon! -Heaven is death. -To you, I run! gives O field, Forgetting the Ideal cruel and Sin To martyr who comes to share the litter or livestock happiest man is lying, because I want to, because then my brain emptied As the pot of rouge lying at the foot of the wall, No longer the art of attifer the idea sobbing, yawning dismally to an obscure death. . . In vain! the triumph Azur, and I hear singing in the bells. My soul, there is more voice to scare us with his victory mean, metal and living out in blue angelus! He rolls the mist, through old and Ta notive agony and a sword on, or flee in revolt inutle and perverse? I'm haunted. The Azur! the Riviera! the Riviera! the Riviera." - Stephane Mallarme, born Étienne Mallarmé
"But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
"It may, after all, be the bad habit of creative talents to invest themselves in pathological extremes that yield remarkable insights but no durable way of life for those who cannot translate their psychic wounds into significant art or thought." - Theodore Roszak
"Finally, it would be a master stroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others. The supreme difficulty in connection with developing the peace work of The Hague arises from the lack of any executive power, of any police power to enforce the decrees of the court. In any community of any size the authority of the courts rests upon actual or potential force: on the existence of a police, or on the knowledge that the able-bodied men of the country are both ready and willing to see that the decrees of judicial and legislative bodies are put into effect." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life by which we surround them. We need comprehensive workman’s compensation acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in book-learning, but also practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for workers in industry and commerce, both within and between the States. Also, friends, in the interest of the working man himself, we need to set our faces like flint against mob-violence just as against corporate greed; against violence and injustice and lawlessness by wage-workers just as much as against lawless cunning and greed and selfish arrogance of employers." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Shamelessness may be defined as neglect of reputation for the sake of base gain." - Theophrastus NULL
"The way to be humble is to look upwards to God. If we think greatly of his majesty, purity, and infinity of all excellence, it will give us such a striking view of our vileness and absolute unworthiness, that we shall think it hardly possible for any to be lower than ourselves." - Thomas Adam
"A stoic of the woods,--a man without a tear." - Thomas Campbell