This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
If he was not commonplace, it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which was simply clear and practical, but through some combination of qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women call him sweet--a word of theirs which conveys otherwise indefinable excellences.
Appreciation | Good | Knowledge | Nothing | Will | Appreciation | Happiness |
Read whatever chapter of Scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it -- yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon Him.
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
Mind | Nature | Order | Religion | Sacrifice | Surrender | Happiness |
It is profit which draws men into enormous unmanageable aggregations called towns, for instance; profit which crowds them up when they are there into quarters without gardens or open spaces; profit which won’t take the most ordinary precautions against wrapping a whole district in a cloud of sulphurous smoke; which turns beautiful rivers into filthy sewers, which condemns all but the rich to live in houses idiotically cramped and confined at the best, and at the worst in houses for whose wretchedness there is no name
A man's worth has its season, like fruit.
Unhappiness | Happiness |
Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it.
The happiness or unhappiness of men depends no less upon their dispositions than their fortunes.
Men | Mind | Unhappiness | Happiness |
The less you trust others, the less you will be deceived.
Our merit gains us the esteem of the virtuous; our star, that of the public.
It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.
The head does not know how to play the part of the heart for long.
Men | Unhappiness | Happiness |
Oh, how this spring of life resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day, Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And, by and by, a cloud takes all away!