This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Wits, like drunken men with swords, are apt to draw their steel upon their best acquaintances.
Humility is often a false front we employ to gain power over others.
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Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? ‘Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ I reject that entirely, said Dirk sharply. The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbably lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is that it is hopelessly improbable?...The first idea merely supposes that there is something we don’t know about, and...there are enough of those. The second, however, runs contrary to something fundamental and human which we do know about. We should therefore be very suspicious of it and all its specious rationality.
However great the advantages which nature bestows on us, it is not she alone, but fortune in conjunction with her, which makes heroes.
The prospect of being pleased tomorrow will never console me for the boredom of today.
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Lawless are they that make their wills their law.
What makes lovers never tire of one another is that they talk always about themselves.
What causes us to like new acquaintances is not so much weariness of our old ones, or the pleasure of change, as disgust at not being sufficiently admired by those who know us too well, and the hope of being admired more by those who do not know so much about us.
Pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision.
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Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
It is useless to talk with those who do not understand one and troublesome to talk with those who criticize from a feeling of superiority. Especially one-sided persons are troublesome. Few are accomplished in many arts and most cling narrowly to their own opinion.
It is true that the Chinese are not so religious as the Hindus, or even as the Japanese; and they are certainly not so religious as the Christian missionaries desire them to be.
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Sejong the Great, aka King Sejong, family name Yi, given name Do NULL
Although those of superior ranks are wiser than their subordinates and should be able to make the right decisions, the subordinates must not hesitate to correct their superiors, if they feel with certainty that the latter’s decisions are wrong.
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
If wives suppress not contempt for husbands, then it follows that such wives rebuke and scold their husbands. If husbands stop not short of anger, then they are certain to beat their wives. The correct relationship between husband and wife is based upon harmony and intimacy, and conjugal love is grounded in proper union. Should actual blows be dealt, how could matrimonial relationship be preserved? Should sharp words be spoken, how could conjugal love exist? If love and proper relationship both be destroyed, then husband and wife are divided.
Action | Discussion | Disrespect | Habit | Heart | Husband | Knowing | Language | Lust | Space | Wife | Will | Following |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
The primary dispositions are innate; the acquired ones, like virtue and the rest, depend on the instruments. The uterine germ and the rest belong to the effect.
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