This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
And where two raging fires meet together; they do consume the thing that feeds their fury. Though little fire grows great with little wind, yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all. Taming of the Shrew, Act ii, Scene 1
Gentleness | Pity | Will | Forgive |
But to my mind, — though I am native here and to the manner born, — it is a custom more honour'd in the breach than the observance. Hamlet, Act i, Scene 4
Boys | Experience | Pleasure | Present | Time |
Being once chafed, he cannot be reigned again to temperance; then he speaks what's in his heart, and that is there which looks with us to break his neck. Coliolanus, Act iii, Scene 3
Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch; Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth; Between two blades, which bears the better temper; Between two horses, which doth bear him best; Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye,— I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment; But in these nice sharp quillets of the law, Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw. King Henry VI. Part I. Act ii. Sc. 4.
C. S. Peirce, fully Charles Sanders Peirce
Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.
Enough | Understanding |
O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
Age | Chance | Disease | Good | Habit | Hate | Life | Life | Little | Luxury | People | Thinking | Time | Will | Learn | Think |
The most desirable mode of education… is that which is careful that all the acquisitions of the pupil shall be preceded and accompanied by desire… The boy, like the man, studies because he desires it. He proceeds upon a plan of is own invention, or by which, by adopting, he has made his own. Everything bespeaks independence and inequality.
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.
Nature | Philosophy |
Once annihilate the quackery of government, and the most homebred understanding might be strong enough to detect the artifices of the state juggler that would mislead him.
Better | Conduct | Consideration | Family | Father | Improvement | Justice | Justify | Life | Life | Lying | Magic | Man | Sense | Truth | Understanding | Will | Work | Worth | Vice |
There is at present in the world a cold reserve that keeps man at a distance from man. There is an art in the practice of which individuals communicate forever, without anyone telling his neighbor what estimate he forms of his attainments and character, how they ought to be employed, and how to be improved. There is a sort of domestic tactics, the object of which is to elude curiosity, and keep up the tenor of conversation, without the disclosure either of our feelings or opinions. The friend of justice will have no object more deeply at heart than the annihilation of this duplicity. The man whose heart overflows with kindness for his species will habituate himself to consider, in each successive occasion of social intercourse, how that occasion may be most beneficently improved. Among the topics to which he will be anxious to awaken attention, politics will occupy a principal share.
Art | Chance | Circumstances | Degeneracy | Discovery | History | Imagination | Important | Improvement | Literature | Observation | Past | Philosophy | Practice | Superstition | Will | Discovery | Art |
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
Property |
If [we] have no chosen the kingdom of God [first], it will make in the end no difference what [we] have chosen instead.
Desire | Life | Life | Nothing | Perfection |
There is a grace in wild variety surpassing rule and order.
Inconvenient | Love | Spirit | Temper |
Why all this strife and zeal about opinions? Death and life go on their own way, carry on their own work, and stay for no opinions... What a delusion it is therefore to grow gray-headed in balancing ancient and modern opinions; to waste the precious uncertain fire of life in critical zeal and verbal animosities; when nothing but the kindling of our working will into a faith that overcometh the world, into a steadfast hope, and ever-burning love and desire of the divine life, can hinder us from falling into eternal death.
Enough | God | Good | Neglect | Religion | Taste | Terror | God |
Everything in... nature, is descended out that which is eternal, and stands as a... visible outbirth of it, so when we know how to separate out the grossness, death, and darkness... from it, we find... it in its eternal state.
Evil | Expectation | Experience | God | Nature | Nothing | Opposition | Rebellion | Trust | Will | God | Expectation |