This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
So work the honey-bees; creatures, by a rule in nature teach the art of order to a peopled kingdom. They have a king and officers of sorts; where some, like magistrates, correct at home; others, like merchants, venture trade abroad; others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, make boot upon the summer's velvet buds; which pillage they, with merry march, bring home, to the tent royal of their emperor; who, busied in his majesty, surveys the singing masons building roofs of gold; the civil citizens kneading up the honey; the poor mechanic porters crowding in their heavy burdens at his narrow gate; the sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum, delivering o'er to executors pale the lazy yawning drone.
Wise |
So man and man should be, but clay and clay differs in dignity, whose dust is both alike.
See, your guests approach. Address yourself to entertain them sprightly, and let's be red with mirth.
Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter, dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty, beyond what can be valued, rich or rare, no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor; as much as child e'er loved, or father found, a love that makes breath poor and speech unable.
Behavior | Cause | Children | Contempt | Counsel | Desire | Duty | Father | Fear | Friend | Good | Grace | Heaven | Honor | Love | Marriage | Mind | Obedience | Pity | Pleasure | Right | Sacred | Time | Wife | Will | Wise | Wit | Woman | Friendship | Counsel | Friends |
He who prates of human nature's baseness and deceit looks in the mirror of his heart, and sees his kind therein reflected.
It was just so in the American Revolution, in 1776, the first delicacy the men threw overboard in Boston harbor was the tea, woman's favorite beverage. The tobacco and whiskey, though heavily taxed, they clung to with the tenacity of the devil-fish.
Men | Nations | Opinion | Philosophy | Wise |
Like many a better one before me, I have gone down under the force of numbers, under the books and books and books that keep coming out and coming out and coming out, shoals of them, spates of them, flash floods of them, too blame many books, and no sign of an end.
Conversation | Tears | Will | Wise | Words |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
It was not death, for I stood up, and all the dead lie down; it was not night, for all the bells put out their tongues, for noon. It was not frost, for on my flesh I felt siroccos crawl, nor fire, for just my marble feet could keep a chancel cool. And yet it tasted like them all; the figures I have seen set orderly, for burial, reminded me of mine, as if my life were shaven and fitted to a frame, and could not breathe without a key; and I was like midnight, some, when everything that ticked has stopped, and space stares, all around, or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, repeal the beating ground. But most like chaos,--stopless, cool, without a chance or spar,-- or even a report of land to justify despair.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
'And then you would like me as well as your father?' observed he more cheerfully. 'But papa says you would love me better than him, and all the world, if you were my wife-so I'd rather you were that!' 'No! I should never love anybody better than papa,' she returned gravely. 'And people hate their wives, sometimes; but not their sisters and brothers, and if you were the latter, you would live with us, and papa would be as fond of you, as he is of me.
Prayer |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
I ran to the children's room: their door was ajar, I saw they had never laid down, though it was past midnight; but they were calmer, and did not need me to console them. The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have hit on: no parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk; and, while I sobbed, and listened. I could not help wishing we were all there safe together.
Rest |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
She seemed almost over fond of Mr. Linton; and even to his sister she showed plenty of affection. They were both very attentive to her comfort, certainly. It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
Reason, indeed, may oft complain for Nature's sad reality, and tell the suffering heart, how vain its cherished dreams must always be; and Truth may rudely trample down the flowers of Fancy, newly-blown.
Wise |
A fool may throw a stone into a well which a hundred wise men cannot pull out.