This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ælian, in his account of Zoilus, the pretended critic, who wrote against Homer and Plato, and thought himself wiser than all who had gone before him, tells us that this Zoilus had a very long beard that hung down upon his breast, but no hair upon his head, which he always kept close shaved, regarding, it seems, the hairs of his head as so many suckers, which, if they had been suffered to grow, might have drawn away the nourishment from his chin, and by that means have starved his beard.
A woman like me! What am I like that's different from you or any man
The fountains of sacred rivers flow upwards (i.e., everything is turned topsy turvy.)
The sweetest teaching did he introduce, concealing truth under untrue speech. The place he spoke of as the gods' abode was that by which he might awe humans most, — The place from which, he knew, terrors came to mortals and things advantageous in their wearisome life — The revolving heaven above, in which dwell the lightnings, and awesome claps of thunder, and the starry face of heaven, beautiful and intricate by that wise craftsman Time, — from which, too, the meteor's glowing mass speeds and wet thunderstorm pours forth upon the earth.
Man |
The real hero stands steadfast in the front row, unperturbed not blinking an eye in the face of the launch of the winged spear.
Those who have searched into human nature observe that nothing so much shows the nobleness of the soul, as that its felicity consists in action. Every man has such an active principle in him that he will find out something to employ himself upon, in whatever place or state of life he is posted.
Conversation | Discretion | Giving | Good | Love | Man | Nothing | Sense |
We are generally so much pleased with any little accomplishments, either of body or mind, which have once made us remarkable in the world, that we endeavor to persuade ourselves it is not in the power of time to rob us of them. We are eternally pursuing the same methods which first procured us the applauses of mankind. It is from this notion that an author writes on, though he is come to dotage; without ever considering that his memory is impaired, and that he hath lost that life, and those spirits, which formerly raised his fancy and fired his imagination. The same folly hinders a man from submitting his behavior to his age, and makes Clodius, who was a celebrated dancer at five-and-twenty, still love to hobble in a minuet, though he is past threescore. It is this, in a word, which fills the town with elderly fops and superannuated coquettes.
Human nature | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Nothing | Will |
The man of the future will be born equipped with a brain and a nervous system quite different from those we have we, human yet traditional, Copernican, classics.
Fighting | Man | Unhappiness |