This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
As a remedy against all ills - poverty, sickness, and melancholy - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work.
Character | Melancholy | Poverty | Work |
To have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more wilt thou see?
A firm faith is the best theology; a good life is the best philosophy, a clear conscience the best law; honesty the best policy, and temperance the best physic.
Character | Conscience | Faith | Good | Honesty | Law | Life | Life | Philosophy | Policy | Theology |
I live in the world, but I seem to myself not of it!.. Natural phenomena are but the shadows of the spirit form which they spring, as the human face changes under the influence of love, hatred or fear... When, O when, shall I be able to reveal its poetry? I see everywhere and in ever object unceasing motion, and in that motion a creative force forever and forever repeating and re-repeating the same simple process as to infinity. Through all nature the grand rhythms roll and heaven and earth are filled with the melody. Men are but boys chasing shadows. The spiritual significance of the world none seem to see - the infinite simplicity of its process are none care to understand.
Boys | Care | Character | Earth | Fear | Force | Heaven | Influence | Love | Melody | Men | Nature | Object | Phenomena | Poetry | Simplicity | Spirit | World |
Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and a vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.
Body | Character | Fame | Fortune | Judgment | Life | Life | Oblivion | Perception | Soul | Time |
Perhaps the most important lesson the world has learned in the past fifty years is that it is not true that "human nature is unchangeable."
Character | Human nature | Important | Lesson | Nature | Past | World |