This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Late February days; and now, at last, might you have thought that Winter's woe was past; so fair the sky was and so soft the air.
We are oftener treacherous through weakness than through calculation.
The principal point of cleverness is to know how to value things just as they deserve.
Our merit gains us the esteem of the virtuous; our star, that of the public.
People who think they can live mean penance others lie to ourselves, but those who think other people cannot live without him be wrong again.
Of France and England, did this king succeed; whose state so many had the managing. That they lost France and made his England bleed.
One that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning.
Once, he kissed me. I loved my lips the better ten days after: would he would do so every day!
Let us not fear that the issues of natural science shall be scepticism or anarchy. - Through all God's works there runs a beautiful harmony. - The remotest truth in his universe is linked to that which lies nearest the throne.
Sorrow |
Prince Shōtoku, born Shotoku Taishi, aka Prince Umayado or Prince Kamitsumiya
Do not fail to obey the commands of your Sovereign. He is like Heaven, which is above the Earth, and the vassal is like the Earth, which bears up Heaven. When Heaven and Earth are properly in place, the four seasons follow their course and all is well in Nature. But if the Earth attempts to take the place of Heaven, Heaven would simply fall in ruin. That is why the vassal listens when the lord speaks, and the inferior obeys when the superior acts. Consequently when you receive the commands of your Sovereign, do not fail to carry them out or ruin will be the natural result.
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome.
Sorrow |
How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.
So smooth he daubed his vice with show of virtue that, his apparent open guilt omitted-- I mean, his conversation with Shore's wife-- He lived from all attainder of suspects. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (King Richard at III, v)
Sir, I am about to weep; but, thinking that We are a queen (or long have dreamed so), certain The daughter of a king, my drops of tears I'll turn to sparks of fire.
As I got older, I discovered that nothing within me cried out for a baby. My womb did not seem to have come equipped with that famously ticking clock. Unlike so many of my friends, I did not ache with longing whenever I saw an infant. (Though I did ache with longing, it is true, whenever I saw a good used-book shop)
Contentment | Distress | Focus | Friend | Global | Search | Sorrow | Suffering | Unhappiness | World | Trouble |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Dreams of doing good for good-for-nothing people.
All perfect things are saddening in effect. The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes, the matchless tinting on the royal rose whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked. Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows, these hold a deeper pathos than our woes, since they leave nothing better to expect.
Day | Fate | Love | Play | Sorrow | Yielding | Fate | Friendship |
It is not men that most women worry about when they rise to the defense of the status quo. Their apparent endorsement of male supremacy is, rather, a pathetic striving for self-respect, self-justification, and self-pardon. After fifteen hundred years of subjection to men, Western woman finds it almost unbearable to face the fact that she has been hoodwinked and enslaved by her inferiors — that the master is lesser than the slave.