This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is given to few persons to keep this secret well. Those who lay down rules too often break them, and the safest we are able to give is to listen much, to speak little, and to say nothing that that will ever give ground or regret.
The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is to go beyond the mark.
Lawless are they that make their wills their law.
It is valueless to a woman to be young unless pretty, or to be pretty unless young.
Men |
The faults of the soul are like body injuries: some care we take to heal, the scar still looks, and they are in danger at any time to reopen.
There are more defects in temperament than in the mind.
There is only one kind of love, but it has a thousand guises.
It is far better to be deceived than undeceived by those whom we tenderly love.
Men |
It is for want of application, rather than of means that people fail,
Men |
The common practice of cunning is the sign of a small genius.-It almost always happens that those who use it to cover themselves in one place, lay themselves open in another.
The head does not know how to play the part of the heart for long.
Men | Unhappiness | Happiness |
O God! that one might read the book of fate, And see the revolution of the times Make mountains level, and the continent, Weary of solid firmness, melt itself Into the sea!
Youth changes its inclinations through heat of blood; old age perseveres in them through the power of habit.
Woman |
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument; So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent: For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told.
Now if you can blush and cry guilty, cardinal you'll show a little honesty.
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.
O God, that one might read the book of fate, and see the revolution of the times make mountains level, and the continent, weary of solid firmness, melt itself into the sea.
Inclination is another word with which will is frequently confounded. Thus, when the apothecary says, in Romeo and Juliet,— “My poverty, but not my will, consents; Take this and drink it off; the work is done.†the word will is plainly used as synonymous with inclination; not in the strict logical sense, as the immediate antecedent of action. It is with the same latitude that the word is used in common conversation, when we think of doing a thing which duty prescribes, against one’s own will; or when we speak of doing a thing willingly or unwillingly.
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