This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in others respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.
Avarice | Character | Evil | Giving | Good | Hate | Injustice | Injustice | Men | Nothing | Society | Guilty |
A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. As a man is, so he sees.
A man may be a miser of his wealth; he may tie up his talent in a napkin; he may hug himself in his reputation; but he is always generous in his love. Love cannot keep it to himself. Like light is constantly traveling. A man must spend it, must give it away.
Light | Love | Man | Reputation | Wealth | Wisdom | Talent |
The money of the miser is coming out of the earth when he is himself going into it.
If the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quiets is still deeper in debt to himself.
But, as we consider the totality of similarly broad and fundamental aspects of life, we cannot defend division by two as a natural principle of objective order. Indeed, the stuff of the universe often strikes our senses as complex and shaded continua, admittedly with faster and slower moments, and bigger and smaller steps, along the way. Nature does not dictate dualities, trinities, quarterings, or any objective basis for human taxonomies; most of our chosen schemes, and our designated numbers of categories, record human choices from a cornucopia of possibilities offered by natural variation from place to place, and permitted by the flexibility of our mental capacities. How many seasons (if we wish to divide by seasons at all) does a year contain? How many stages shall we recognize in a human life?
Altruism | Extreme | Nature | Speculation |
I see the fourfold man; the humanity in deadly sleep, and its fallen emanation, the spectre and its cruel shadow. I see the past, present, and future existing all at once before me.
Money |