This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Samuel David Luzzatto, aka by acronym of SHaDaL or SHeDaL
Society's preservation and man's happiness depend on illusion. Nature itself, which certainly represents the will of God, deludes us in many respects, as when it leads us by the cords of love to reproduce the race. If a youth would consider the trouble in rearing a family, not one in a thousand would marry, but nature closes our eyes to the future (and indeed, wherever popular knowledge rises, the birth rate declines). The same is true of the other passions, which nature utilizes to deceive man and goad them toward the attainment of ends which, when attained, turn out to be but vanity.
Attainment | Birth | Ends | Family | Future | God | Illusion | Knowledge | Love | Man | Nature | Race | Society | Will | Wisdom | Youth | Youth | Trouble | Happiness |
Martial, full name Marcus Valarius Martialis NULL
Fortune gives many too much, but none enough.
Neil MacCormick, Sir Donald Neil MacCormick
When we say that law ‘embodies’ values we are talking metaphorically. What does it mean? Values are only ‘embodied’ in law in the sense that and to the extent that human beings approve of the laws they have because of the state of affairs they are supposed to secure, being states of affairs which are on some ground deemed just or otherwise good. This need not be articulated at all.
Love is like a charming romance which is read with avidity, and often with such impatience that many pages are skipped to reach the denouement sooner.
Impatience | Love | Romance | Wisdom |
The institutions of a country depend in great measure on the nature of its soil and situation. Many of the wants of man are awakened or supplied by these circumstances. To these wants, manners, laws, and religion must shape and accommodate themselves. The division of land, and the rights attached to it, alter with the soil; the laws relating to its produce, with its fertility. The manners of its inhabitants are in various ways modified by its position. The religion of a miner is not the same as the faith of a shepherd, nor is the character of the ploughman so war-like as that of the hunter. The observant legislator follows the direction of all these various circumstances. the knowledge of the natural advantages or defects of a country thus form an essential part of political science and history.
Character | Circumstances | Defects | Faith | History | Knowledge | Land | Man | Manners | Nature | Position | Religion | Rights | Science | Wants | War | Wisdom |
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, aka "Pat"
Liberty and Equality are the twin ideals of American democracy. But they are not the same thing... Many person who would gladly die for liberty are appalled by equality. Many who are devoted to equality are puzzled and even troubled by liberty. Much of the political history of the American nation can be seen as a competition between these two ideals.
Competition | Democracy | Equality | History | Ideals | Liberty | Wisdom |
The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.
When a man is sure that all he wants is happiness, then most grievously he deceives himself. All men desire happiness, but they need something far different, compared to which happiness is trivial, and in the lack of which happiness turns to bitterness in the mouth. There are many names for that which men need - "the one thing needful" - but the simplest is "wholeness."
Bitterness | Desire | Man | Men | Need | Wants | Wholeness | Wisdom | Happiness |
We must form the picture of the life as a growth, transverse to time, and capable of growing not merely in one part but in many parts, i.e. we must get rid of the idea that he life only grows from the present. This gives a wrong relation to the moment. The life may grow in all parts of itself ad we may be affected by these growing directions (in other parts of our personal Time) even in the ‘present’.
Reading affords the opportunity to everyone - the poor, the rich, the humble, the great - to spend as many hours as he wishes in the company of the noblest men and women that the world has ever known.
As ages roll on there is doubtless a progression in human nature. The intellectual comes to rule the physical, and the moral claims to subordinate both. It is no longer strength of body that prevails, but strength of mind; while the law of God proclaims itself superior to both.
Body | God | Human nature | Law | Mind | Nature | Rule | Strength | Wisdom | God |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
It takes a lot of self-love and presumption to have such esteem for one’s own opinions that to establish them one must overthrow the public peace and introduce so many inevitable evils, and such a horrible corruption of morals, as civil wars and political changes bring with them in a matter of such weight - and introduce them into one’s own country.
Corruption | Esteem | Inevitable | Love | Peace | Presumption | Public | Self | Self-love | Wisdom |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops.
Wisdom |