This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Marriage is not and should not be an interminable conversation. The happy marriage allows for privileged silences.
Character | Conversation | Happy | Marriage |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticizes us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Love hates people to be attached to each other except by himself, and takes a laggard part in relations that are set up and maintained under another title, as marriage is. Connections and means have, with reason, as much weight in it as graces and beauty, or more. We do not marry for ourselves, whatever we say; we marry must as much or more for our posterity, for our family. The practice and benefit of marriage concerns our race very far beyond us. Therefore I like this fashion of arranging it rather by a third hand than by our own, and by the sense of other rather than by our own. How opposite is all this to the conventions of love!
Beauty | Character | Family | Love | Marriage | Means | People | Posterity | Practice | Race | Reason | Sense | Title |
Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL
Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart of life, and is prophetic of eternal good.
Character | Duty | Eternal | Good | Grace | Heart | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Right | Soul | Truth |
Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL
Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.
Character | Duty | Eternal | Good | Grace | Heart | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Right | Soul | Truth |
Those divinely possessed and inspired have at least the knowledge that they hold some greater thing within them, though they cannot tell what it is; from the movements that stir them and the utterances that come from them they perceive the power, not themselves, that moves them: I the same way, it must be, we stand towards the Supreme when we hold nous pure; we know the Divine Mind within, that which gives Being and all else of that order: but we know, too, that other, know that it is none of these, but a nobler principle than anything we know as Being; fuller and greater; above reason, mind and feeling; conferring these powers, not to be confounded with them.
Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Character | Moderation | Temper | Virtue | Virtue | Moderation |
The fundamental principle of all morals, on the basis of which I have reasoned in all my writings... is that man is naturally good, loving justice and order; that there is absolutely no original perversity in the human heart, and that the first movements of nature are always right.
Character | Good | Heart | Justice | Man | Nature | Order | Right |
Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting, and enhancing life and that to destroy, to harm, or to hinder life is evil. Affirmation of the world - that is affirmation of the will to live, which appears in phenomenal forms all round me - is only possible for me in that I give myself out for other life.
Character | Destroy | Evil | Good | Harm | Life | Life | Morality | Reverence | Will | World |
Roy L. Smith, aka Mr. Methodist
It is a healthy symptom when a man is dissatisfied without being discouraged.