This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There are a great many men valued in society who have nothing to recommend them but serviceable vices.
Self-interest | Virtue | Virtue |
Nature makes merit, and fortune puts it to work.
Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.
There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard there was such a thing.
The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice.
Self-interest | Virtue | Virtue |
Weakness is the only fault that is incorrigible.
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.
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
It is better to bear the ills we have, than to anticipate those which may never come.
Pride |
O my love, my wife! Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
What makes lovers never tire of one another is that they talk always about themselves.
What causes us to like new acquaintances is not so much weariness of our old ones, or the pleasure of change, as disgust at not being sufficiently admired by those who know us too well, and the hope of being admired more by those who do not know so much about us.
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; and now I'll do 't: and so he goes to heaven; and so am I reveng'd.
O how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes favors! There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, that sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, more pangs and fears than wars or women have, and when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again. Henry VIII (Wolsey at III, ii)
Beauty | Looks | Play | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Youth | Youth | Beauty |
Pity, like a naked, new-born babe striding the blast, or heaven's cherubins, horsed upon the sightless couriers of the air, shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, that tears shall drown the wind.