This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
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 |
Everyone knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call fourth. … Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. … Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives fare within his limits he possesses powers of various sorts he habitually fails to use.
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
Live all you can. It's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do — but live. This place makes it all come over me. I see it now. I haven't done so — and now I'm old. It's too late. It has gone past me — I've lost it. You have time. You are young. Live!
Soul |
There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
What keeps persons down in the world, besides lack of capacity, is not a philosophical contempt of riches or honors, but thoughtlessness and improvidence, a love of sluggish torpor, and of present gratification. It is not from preferring virtue to wealth--the goods of the mind to those of fortune--that they take no thought for the morrow; but from want of forethought and stern self-command. The restless, ambitious man too often directs these qualities to an unworthy object; the contented man is generally deficient in the qualities themselves. The one is a stream that flows too often in a wrong channel, and needs to have its course altered, the other is a stagnant pool.
Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain.
The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, as something which we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible.
O surely this morning all sorrow is hidden, all battle is hushed for this even at least; and no one this noontide may hunger, unbidden to the flowers and the singing and the joy of your feast where silent ye sit midst the world's tale increased.
Love is enough: through the trouble and tangle from yesterday's dawning to yesterday's night I sought through the vales where the prisoned winds wrangle, till, wearied and bleeding, at end of the light I met him, and we wrestled, and great was my might. And the shadow of the night and not love was departed; I was sore, I was weary, yet love lived to seek; so I scaled the dark mountains, and wandered sad-hearted over wearier wastes, where e'en sunlight was bleak, with no rest of the night for my soul waxen weak.
From those thy words, I deem from some distress by deeds of mine thy dear life I might save; O then, delay not! if one ever gave his life to any, mine I give to thee; come, tell me what the price of love must be? Swift death, to be with thee a day and night and with the earliest dawning to be slain? Or better, a long year of great delight, and many years of misery and pain? Or worse, and this poor hour for all my gain? A sorry merchant am I on this day,e'en as thou willest so must I obey.
Love is enough: cherish life that abideth, lest ye die ere ye know him, and curse and misname him; for who knows in what ruin of all hope he hideth, on what wings of the terror of darkness he rideth? And what is the joy of man's life that ye blame him for his bliss grown a sword, and his rest grown a fire?
It is wonderful how near conceit is to insanity!
Beauty | Gold | Indispensable | Price | Beauty |
Tut! the best thing I know between France and England is the sea.
Nothing |
Everyone agrees that a secret should be kept intact, but everyone does not agree as to the nature and importance of secrecy. Too often we consult ourselves as to what we should say, what we should leave unsaid. There are few permanent secrets, and the scruple against revealing them will not last forever.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
They live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief