This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Come, Kate, thou art perfect in lying down. Come, quick, quick, that I may lay my head in thy lap.
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
The conqueror is regarded with awe the wise man commands our respect but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection
We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.
Friends |
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
Friends |
Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.
Friends |
The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in.
Absolute | Ambition | Blush | Education | Feelings | Honor | Individual | Men | Pride | Question | Race | Reason | Right | Shame | System | Time | Worth | Ambition | Old |
Ornamental pattern work, to be raised above the contempt of reasonable men, must possess three qualities: beauty, imagination and order.
Friends |
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
In the human heart new passions are forever being born; the overthrow of one almost always means the rise of another.
In the pursuits of women nothing plays a smaller part than love.
Friends |
We love those who admire us, but not those whom we admire.
Inclination | Love | Preference | Taste | Friends |
It is not enough to have great qualities, we must also have the management of them.
The generality of men have, like plants, latent properties, which chance brings to light.
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.
When we exaggerate the tenderness of our friends towards us, it is often less from gratitude than from a desire to exhibit our own merit.
When we seek reconciliation with our enemies, it is commonly out of a desire to better our own condition, a being harassed and tired out with a state of war, and a fear of some ill accident which we are willing to prevent.
Desire | Gratitude | Tenderness | Friends |