This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
ROMEO: Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace! Thou talk'st of nothing. Mercutio: True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind, who wooes even now the frozen bosom of the north, and, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, turning his face to the dew-dropping south. BENVOLIO: This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves; supper is done, and we shall come too late.
Love |
Since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.
Hate |
ROMEO. Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace! Thou talk'st of nothing. MERCUTIO. True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air, and more inconstant than the wind.
SIR ANDREW AGUE-CHEEK: I'll stay a month longer. I am a fellow o' the strangest mind i' the world; I delight in masques and revels sometimes altogether (He's an oddity in that he enjoys having fun)
Hate |
Sir, I am about to weep; but, thinking that We are a queen (or long have dreamed so), certain The daughter of a king, my drops of tears I'll turn to sparks of fire.
The Silly Putty-like malleability of the institution [marriage], in fact, is the only reason we still have the thing at all. Very few people... would accept marriage on it's thirteenth-century terms. Marriage survives, in other words, precisely because it evolves. (Though I suppose this would not be a very persuasive argument to those who probably also don't believe in evolution).
It is not men that most women worry about when they rise to the defense of the status quo. Their apparent endorsement of male supremacy is, rather, a pathetic striving for self-respect, self-justification, and self-pardon. After fifteen hundred years of subjection to men, Western woman finds it almost unbearable to face the fact that she has been hoodwinked and enslaved by her inferiors — that the master is lesser than the slave.
I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money.
Hence, goes on the professor, definitions of happiness are interesting. I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but that may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: One of the best (we are still on definitions of happiness) was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: 'The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.' Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe.
Enough | God | Hate | Heart | Little | Thought | God | Think | Thought |
I have read but little of Madame Glyn. I did not know that things like It were going on. I have misspent my days. When I think of all those hours I flung away in reading William James and Santayana, when I might have been reading of life, throbbing, beating, perfumed life, I practically break down. Where, I ask you, have I been, that no true word of Madame Glyn's literary feats has come to me? But even those far, far better informed than I must work a bit over the opening sentence of Madame Glyn's foreword to her novel This is not, the says, drawing her emeralds warmly about her, the story of the moving picture entitled It, but a full character study of the story It, which the people in the picture read and discuss. I could go mad, in a nice way, straining to figure that out... Well it turns out that Ava and John meet, and he begins promptly to vibrate with passion... It goes on for nearly three hundred pages, with both of them vibrating away like steam launches.
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Some keep the Sabbath going to church, I keep it staying at home, with a bobolink for a chorister, and an orchard for a dome.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
Really, Miss Catherine, how can I know?' I replied. 'To be sure, considering the exhibition you performed in his presence this afternoon, I might say it would be wise to refuse him: since he asked you after that, he must either be hopelessly stupid or a venturesome fool.
Envy |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return - the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame - shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.
Art | Change | Danger | Darkness | Doubt | Dreams | Grief | Guile | Hate | Heart | Hope | Liberty | Life | Life | Pain | Quiet | Reason | Suffering | Suspicion | Thankfulness | Trust | Truth | World | Danger | Art |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But, till then--if you don't believe me, you don't know me--till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
Good words, I replied. But deeds must prove it also; and after he is well, remember you don't forget resolutions formed in the hour of fear.
Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels, said Dr. Samuel Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman.
Duty | Fortune | Kill | Little | Superiority |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
He'll never let his friends be at ease, and he'll never be at ease himself!
Esteem | Hate | Impertinence | Love |