This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
The illness I suffer from is serious and persistent and my life may be over any day. Whenever I think about you, I become sad and depressed. In my leisure time I have written Precepts for My Daughters in seven chapters. My daughters, each of you make yourself a copy; perhaps it will be of some use and benefit to you. Do your very best once you have left home!
Birth | Day | Duty | Esteem | Labor | Play | Practice | Regard | Worship |
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
Now the wives of the husband’s elder brothers and his younger sister are equal in status; while they may be no bond of affection, they have become close relatives by duty. Now a pure and gentle, modest and obedient person will by adhering to duty be able to create a deep friendship and to extend affection to obtain their help. As a result, her excellence and beauty will be brilliantly displayed, her faults and defects will be concealed and hidden, her parent-in-law will cherish and commend her, her husband and master will laud and praise her, and her reputation will shine in town and village, its great glory extending to her father and mother… This is the root of glory or dishonor, the basis of fame or infamy. Of course you have to be circumspect!
Devotion | Esteem | Firmness | Honor | Important | Nothing | Respect | Respect |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
I measure every Grief I meet with narrow, probing, Eyes; I wonder if It weighs like Mine, or has an Easier size. I wonder if They bore it long, or did it just begin? I could not tell the Date of Mine, it feels so old a pain. I wonder if it hurts to live, and if They have to try, and whether, could They choose between, it would not be, to die. I note that Some -- gone patient long -- At length, renew their smile. An imitation of a Light that has so little Oil. I wonder if when Years have piled, some Thousands -- on the Harm of early hurt -- if such a lapse could give them any Balm; or would they go on aching still through Centuries above, enlightened to a larger Pain by Contrast with the Love. The Grieved are many, I am told; the reason deeper lies, -- Death is but one and comes but once, and only nails the eyes. There's Grief of Want and Grief of Cold, -- a sort they call Despair; there's Banishment from native Eyes, in sight of Native Air. And though I may not guess the kind correctly, yet to me a piercing Comfort it affords in passing Calvary, to note the fashions of the Cross, and how they're mostly worn, still fascinated to presume that Some are like My Own.
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 |
Some small engagement at least in business not only sets a manÂ’s talents in the fairest light, and allots him a part to act in which a wife cannot well intermeddle, but gives frequent occasions for those little absences, which, whatever seeming uneasiness they may give, are some of the best preservatives of love and desire.
Esteem | Principles |
There is something so gross in the carriage of some wives that they lose their husbandsÂ’ hearts for faults which, if a man has either good-nature or good-breeding, he knows not how to tell them of. I am afraid, indeed, the ladies are generally most faulty in this particular; who at their first giving into love find the way so smooth and pleasant that they fancy it is scarce possible to be tired in it. There is so much nicety and discretion required to keep love alive after marriage, and make conversation still new and agreeable after twenty or thirty years, that I know nothing which seems readily to promote it but an earnest endeavor to please on both sides, and superior good sense on the part of the man.
Change | Desire | Despair | Esteem | Mind | Friendship | Value |