This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer
Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.
Pleasure |
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
I think I may fairly make two postulata. First, that food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, that the passion between the sexes is necessary, and will remain nearly in its present state. These two laws ever since we have had any knowledge of mankind, appear to have been fixed laws of our nature; and, as we have not hitherto seen any alteration in them, we have no right to conclude that they will ever cease to be what they now are, without an immediate act of power in that Being who first arranged the system of the universe, and for the advantage of his creatures, still executes, according to fixed laws, all its various operations.
Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality.
Advice | Body | Genius | Haste | Important | Life | Life | Literature | Man | Nothing | Perfection | Play | Pleasure | Popularity | Reason | Recreation | Wonder | Work | Think |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
He possessed the six attributes of the adventurer-- a memory for names and faces, with the aptitude for altering his own; the gift of tongues; inexhaustible invention; secrecy; the talent for falling into conversation with strangers; and that freedom from conscience that springs from a contempt for the dozing rich he preyed upon.
Beginning | Life | Life | Love | Neglect | Pleasure | Loss | Privilege |
An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character, and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy.
Courage | Daring | Decision | Generosity | Pleasure | Present | Will | Hardship | Friends |
I have formerly given the general character of Mr. Addison’s style and manner as natural and unaffected, easy and polite, and full of those graces which a flowery imagination diffuses over writing.
One has to know joy and pain to recognize happiness and misfortune.
Between levity and cheerfulness there is a wide distinction; and the mind which is most open to levity is frequently a stranger to cheerfulness. It has been remarked that transports of intemperate mirth are often no more than flashes from the dark cloud; and that in proportion to the violence of the effulgence is the succeeding gloom. Levity may be the forced production of folly or vice; cheerfulness is the natural offspring of wisdom and virtue only. The one is an occasional agitation; the other a permanent habit. The one degrades the character; the other is perfectly consistent with the dignity of reason, and the steady and manly spirit of religion. To aim at a constant succession of high and vivid sensations of pleasure is an idea of happiness perfectly chimerical. Calm and temperate enjoyment is the utmost that is allotted to man. Beyond this we struggle in vain to raise our state; and in fact depress our joys by endeavoring to heighten them. Instead of those fallacious hopes of perpetual festivity with which the world would allure us, religion confers upon us a cheerful tranquillity. Instead of dazzling us with meteors of joy which sparkle and expire, it sheds around us a calm and steady light, more solid, more equal, and more lasting.
Action | Attention | Character | Competition | Enemy | Enjoyment | Foresight | Industry | Life | Life | Mind | Pleasure | Present | Prudence | Prudence | Wealth | World | Youth | Youth |
The self-conceit of the young is the great source of those dangers to which they are exposed.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning or an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that question is: 'Who knows how to make love stay?'
Art | Enough | Land | Magic | Pleasure | Present | Religion | Science | Time | Art |
And now, my honey love, Will we return unto thy father's house And revel it as bravely as the best, With silken coats and caps and golden rings, With ruffs and cuffs and farthingales and things; With scarfs and fans and double change of brav'ry, With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knav'ry. The Taming of the Shrew (Petruchio at IV, iii)
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 |
Daniel Gilbert, fully Daniel Todd Gilbert, aka Professor Happiness
Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.
Cause | Experience | Pleasure |