This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities, and to make the most of one's resources.
Taste and genius are two words frequently joined together, and therefore, by inaccurate thinkers, confounded. They signify, however, two quite different things. The difference between them can be clearly pointed out, and it is of importance to remember it. Taste consists in the power of judging; genius, in the power of executing. One may have a considerable degree of taste in poetry, eloquence, or any of the fine arts, who has little or hardly any genius for composition or execution in any of these arts; but genius cannot be found without including taste also. Genius, therefore, deserves to be considered as a higher power of the mind than taste. Genius always imports something inventive or creative, which does not rest in mere sensibility to beauty where it is perceived, but which can, moreover, produce new beauties, and exhibit them in such a manner as strongly to impress the minds of others. Refined taste forms a good critic; but genius is further necessary to form the poet or the orator.
Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted to God. He therefore is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life, parts of piety, by doing everything in the name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to his Glory.
Birth | Death | Envy | Existence | Good | Man | Nature | Peace | Power | Self | Soul | Spirit | Will |
This therefore is a certain truth, that hell and death, curse and misery, can never cease or be removed from the creation till the will of the creature is again as it came from God and is only a Spirit of Love that wills nothing but goodness. All the whole fallen creation, stand it never so long, must groan and travail in pain, till every contrariety to the divine will is entirely taken from every creature. Which is only saying, that all the powers and properties of nature are a misery to themselves, can only work in disquiet and wrath, till the birth of the Son of God brings them under the dominion and power of the Spirit of Love.
We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
The praise we give to new comers into the world arises from the envy we bear to those who are established.
Regard |
Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.
If we are to judge of love by its consequences, it more nearly resembles hatred than friendship.
Penetration or discernment has an air of divination; it pleases our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.
The most violent passions have their intermissions; vanity alone gives us no respite.
The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.
We seldom attribute common sense except to those who agree with us.
Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away.
Little |
The name and pretense of virtue is as serviceable to self-interest as are real vices.
Penetration has an air of divination; it pleases our vanity more than any other quality of the mind.
Whatever difference may appear in the fortunes of mankind, there is, nevertheless, a certain compensation of good and evil which makes them equal.
What is commonly called friendship is no more than a partnership; a reciprocal regard for one another's interests, and an exchange of good offices; in a word, a mere traffic, wherein self-love always proposes to be a gainer.
What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.