This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes
As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property.
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
I too have sworn heedlessly and all the time, I have had this most repulsive and death-dealing habit. I’m telling your graces; from the moment I began to serve God, and saw what evil there is in forswearing oneself, I grew very afraid indeed, and out of fear I applied the brakes to this old, old, habit.
Ambition | Anxiety | Anxiety | Attainment | Better | Day | Happy | Heart | Joy | Man | Means | Object | Plenty | Right | Teach | Unhappiness | Ambition | Friends | Happiness | Winning |
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
Teach him to sing those psalms which are so full of love of wisdom; as at once concerning chastity or rather, before all, of not companying with the wicked, immediately with the very beginning of the book; (for therefore also it was that that prophet began on this wise, ‘Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly; Ps. i. I, and again, ‘I have not say in the council of vanity’; and again, ‘in his sight a wicked doer is contemned, but he honoreth those that fear the Lord, of companying the good, (and these subjects thou wilt find there in abundance,) of restraining the belly, of restraining the hand, of refraining from excess, of not overreaching; that money is nothing nor glory, and other things such like...When in these thou hast led him on from childhood, by little and little thou wilt lead him forward even to the higher things. The Psalms contain things, but the Hymns again have nothing human. When he has been instructed out of the Psalms, he will then know hymns also, as a diviner thing.
Better | Friend | Joy | Light | Love | Poverty | Words | Friends |
Give us, O Lord, a steadfast heart, which no unworthy affection may drag downwards; give us an unconquered heart, which no tribulation can wear out; give us an upright heart, which no unworthy purpose may tempt aside. Bestow upon us also, O Lord our God, understanding to know you, diligence to seek you, wisdom to find you, and a faithfulness that may finally embrace you; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL
No grief reaches the dead.
You should not be surprised if you sometimes feel impatient hearing confessions, and vain in your sermons and in your studies. You are a man and, consequently, a sinner. . . . There is a difference between the act, the consent, and the temptation, and you are mistaking one for the other. If you are tempted to pride in your sermons, you do not, however, preach for this reason. When you are inclined to impatience in the confessional, even if, by chance, you consent to it in some way, it does not follow that you act on it. As for eating, have no scruple about the desires this stimulates in you, nor think you are going to excess in that regard; I have been informed of the contrary. Speaking of that, I ask you to eat better than you have been doing.
Circumspection | Gentleness | People | Receive | Reserve | Time | World | Friends |
We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom all alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in Heaven, and with a propitious eye beholds his subjects assuming that freedom of thought, and dignity of self-direction which He bestowed on them. From the rising to the setting sun, may His kingdom come.
Business | Feelings | Important | Mankind | Men | Time | Business | Friends | Think |
Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.
Divine right went out with the American Revolution and doesn't belong to the White House aides. What meat do they eat that makes them grow so great?
I do not like war and I do not like strikes, but I am unwilling to oppose all wars and for the same reason I am unwilling to say that strikes are wrong. Both are right and necessary and should be used when the cause of justice can be retained in no other way.
Absolute | Belief | Cause | Dependence | Learning | Question | Will | Friends |
We send organizers to the south and instead of being permitted to talk to the negroes . . . our organizers have been mistreated and driven out of towns. . . .If we get no chance to deal with the negroes we can do nothing for them.
Evil | Philosophy | Play | Friends |
If, in all this civilization, and if, in all the wealth produced, if in all this great fertile country of ours . . . we assert first, that wherever and whenever there be one human soul in our country walking the streets unable to find the opportunity to perform work and service to society, to demand in return for it the decent livelihood with opportunities for the cultivation of the best that is in us, if there is that opportunity denied to any one single man or woman in all this country, to him or to her all our boasted civilization is a sham.
Better | Dawn | Day | Labor | Man | Need | Strength | Time | Wants | Will | Work | Afraid | Friends | Old |
At the outset, I want to say that the organized labor movement of America is not a know-nothing organization. It does not want to erect a wall around the borders of our country and keep everybody else out; it does not declare America for Americans, or for those who are now within American borders. But on the other hand it is equally true that the thinking workingmen of the United States have . . . come to the conclusion that there must be some better regulation and some limitation.
Defeat | Improvement | Love | Order | Position | Question | Sentiment | Will | Friends |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Men seldom give pleasure when they are not pleased themselves.
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Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
When we see the avaricious and crafty taking companions to their tables, and their beds, without any inquiry but after farms and money; or the giddy and thoughtless uniting themselves for life to those whom they have only seen by the light of tapers; when parents make articles for children without inquiring after their consent; when some marry for heirs to disappoint their brothers; and others throw themselves into the arms of those whom they do not love, because they have found themselves rejected where they were more solicitous to please; when some marry because their servants cheat them; some because they squander their own money; some because their houses are pestered with companv; some because they will live like other people; and some because they are sick of themselves, we are not so much inclined to wonder that marriage is sometimes unhappy, as that it appears so little loaded with calamity, and cannot but conclude that society has something in itself eminently agreeable to human nature, when we find its pleasures so great, that even the ill choice of a companion can hardly overbalance them. - Those, therefore, that rail against matrimony, should be informed, that they are neither to wonder, or repine, that a contract begun on such principles has ended in disappointment.
Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.
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