This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Good and Evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different: And diverse men differ not only in their judgment, on the senses of what is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hearing, touch, and sight, but also of what is conformable, or disagreeable to Reason, in the actions of the common life. Nay, the same man, in diverse times, differs from himself, and one time praiseth, that is, calleth Good, what another time he dispraiseth, and calleth Evil.
Imagination | Passion | Power |
The difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit, to which another may not pretend as well as he.
Action | Body | Change | Day | Distinction | Imagination | Impression | Light | Man | Memory | Men | Noise | Object | Past | Present | Receive | Sense | Time |
The imaginations of them that sleep are those we call ‘dreams.’ And these also, as also all other imaginations, have been before, either totally or by parcels, in the sense. And, because in sense, the brain and nerves, which are the necessary organs of sense, are so benumbed in sleep as not easily to be moved by the action of external objects, there can happen in sleep no imagination, and therefore no dream, but what proceeds from the agitation of the inward parts of man’s body; which inward parts, for the connection they have with the brain and other organs, when they be distempered, do keep the same in motion; whereby the imaginations there formerly made, appear as if a man were waking; saving that the organs of sense being now benumbed, so as there is no new object which can master and obscure them with a more vigorous impression, a dream must needs be more clear in this silence of sense than our waking thoughts. And hence it cometh to pass that it is a hard matter, and by many thought impossible, to distinguish exactly between sense and dreaming. For my part, when I consider that in dreams I do not often nor constantly think of the same persons, places, objects, and actions, that I do waking, nor remember so long a train of coherent thoughts, dreaming, as at other times, and because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied, that, being awake, I know I dream not, though when I dream I think myself awake.
Custom | Imagination | Man | Understanding | Will | Words | Understand |
Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.
Discussion | Disease | Education | Enthusiasm |
The monopoly of a single bank is certainly an evil. The multiplication of them was intended to cure it; but it multiplied an influence of the same character with the first, and completed the supplanting the precious metals by a paper circulation. Between such parties the less we meddle the better.
Imagination | Object |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide.
Enthusiasm | Means | Politics | Reason |
We should be determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness.
Bigotry | Discussion | Disease | Education | Enthusiasm | Will |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
This is a choice that makes overwhelming sense.
Enthusiasm | Fanaticism | Humanity | Means | Politics | Reason | Salvation |
To secure these [inalienable] rights [to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed... Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on suchprinciples, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Age | Danger | Enthusiasm | Freedom | Man | Mankind | Mind | Science | Spirit | Will | World | Youth | Youth | Danger | Think |
We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.
Imagination | Men | Time |
Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf
Goedel proved that a system of axioms can never be based on itself; in order to prove its validity, statements from outside must be used.
Challenge | Enthusiasm | Ideas | Influence | Present | Sense | Unique |
Thomas Macaulay, fully Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Real security... is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaption to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to every house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.
Imagination | Judgment | Life | Life |
The inquiry in England is not whether a man has talents and genius, but whether he is passive and polite and a virtuous ass and obedient to noblemen's opinions in art and science. If he is, he is a good man. If not, he must be starved.
Existence | Imagination |
I have mental joys and mental health, mental friends and mental wealth, I've a wife that I love and that loves me; I've all but riches bodily.
Happy | Imagination | Man | World |
Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.
Beauty | Enthusiasm | Passion | Beauty |
Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled.
Imagination | World |
My native place was [alive] with old legends, tales, traditions, customs and superstitions; so that in my early youth, even beyond the walls of my own humble roof, they met me in every direction.
Better | Confidence | Education | Esteem | Father | Heart | Imagination | Integrity | Language | Legends | Man | Memory | Mind | Mother | Peculiarity | People | Piety | Present | Rank | Receive | Spirit | Will | Youth | Youth | Blessed | Circumstance | Old |
Then my verse I dishonor, my pictures despise, my person degrade and my temper chastise; and the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame; and my talents I bury, and dead is my fame.
The true method of knowledge is experiment.