This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The progressive principle is antagonistic to the sway of custom. The contest between these two principles, custom and progress, constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind.
Custom | History | Mankind | Principles | Progress |
One of the greatest dangers... of democracy, as of all other forms of government, lies in the sinister interest of the holders of power: it is the danger of class legislation; of government intended for (whether really effecting it or not) the immediate benefit of the dominant class, to the lasting detriment of the whole. And one of the most important questions demanding consideration, in determining the best constitution of a representative government, is how to provide efficacious securities against this evil.
Consideration | Danger | Democracy | Evil | Government | Important | Power | Government | Danger |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Many men fail to realize that joy is distinctly moral. It is a fruit of the spiritual life. We have no more right to pray for joy, if we are not doing the things that Jesus said would bring it, than we would have to ask interest in a savings bank in which we had never deposited money. Joy does not happen. It is a flower that springs from roots. It is the inevitable results of certain lines followed and laws obeyed, and so a matter of character.
Character | Inevitable | Joy | Life | Life | Men | Money | Right |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
For not only is Fortune herself blind, but she generally causes those men to be blind whose interest she has more particularly embraced. Therefore they are often haughty and arrogant; nor is there anything more intolerable than a prosperous fool. And hence we often see that men who were at one time affable and agreeable are completely changed by prosperity, despising their old friends, and clinging to the new.
Fortune | Men | Prosperity | Time | Old |
Maurice Sendak, fully Maurice Bernard Sendak
You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.
Noah Webster, fully Noah Webster, Jr.
It is alleged by men of loose principles, or defective views of the subject, that religion and morality are not necessary or important qualifications for political station. When a citizen gives his vote to a man of immorality, he abuses his civic responsibility. He sacrifices not only his own interest but that of his neighbor, and he betrays the interest of his country.
Important | Man | Men | Morality | Principles | Religion | Responsibility |
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!
Politics |
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which they took no interest. For it is part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.
For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.
Achievement | Children | Enjoyment | Success |
Everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger.
Justice |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
What is at the heart of all our national problems? It is that we have seen the hand of material interest sometimes about to close upon our dearest rights and possessions.
Heart | Possessions | Problems | Rights |
Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
The question of questions for mankind - the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other - is the ascertainment of the placed which man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things. Whence our race has come; what are the limits of our power over nature, and of nature’s power over us; to what goal we are tending; are the problems which present themselves anew and with undiminished interest to every man born into the world.
Man | Mankind | Nature | Power | Present | Problems | Question | Race | Universe | World |
W. H. Davies, fully William Henry Davies
Let us not judge life by the number of its breaths taken, but by the number of times the breath is held, or lost, either under a deep emotion, caused by love, or when we stand before an object of interest and beauty.
I say that justice is nothing other than the interest of the stronger.
A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites no interest in any. Repose is necessary in conversation.
Conversation | Repose |