This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is a folly to deny that which a man’s own nature witnesseth to him. The whole frame of bodies and souls bears the impress of the infinite power and wisdom of the Creator: a body framed with an admirable architecture, a soul endowed with understanding, will, judgment, memory, imagination. Man is the epitome of the world, contains in himself the substance of all natures, and the fullness of the whole universe; not only in regard of the universalness of his knowledge, whereby he comprehends the reasons of many things; but as all the perfections of the several natures of the world are gathered and united in man, for the perfection of his own, in a smaller volume. In his soul he partakes of heaven, in his body of the earth. There is the life of plants, the sense of beasts, and the intellectual nature of angels.
Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. There is nothing to do but be.
Absolute | Experience | Mercy |
If every man had a beginning, every man then was once nothing; he could not then make himself, because nothing cannot be the cause of something; “The Lord he is God; he hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Ps. c. iii.) Whatsoever begun in time was not; and when it was nothing, it had nothing, and could do nothing; and therefore could never give to itself, nor to any other, to be—or to be able to do: for then it gave what it had not, and did what it could not. Since reason must acknowledge a first of every kind, a first man, etc., it must acknowledge him created and made, not by himself: why have not other men since risen up by themselves, not by chance? why hath not chance produced the like in that long time the world hath stood? If we never knew anything give being to itself, how can we imagine anything ever could?
Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock
Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so, and lo, it presently turns out to be so.
Reputation | Think |
Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser
Carrie felt this as a personal reproof. She read Dora Thorne, or had a great deal in the past. It seemed only fair to her, but she supposed that people thought it very fine. Now this clear- eyed, fine-headed youth, who looked something like a student to her, made fun of it. It was poor to him, not worth reading. She looked down, and for the first time felt the pain of not understanding.
Government | Important | Inquiry | Man | Need | Organization | People | Poverty | Reputation | War | Government | Vicissitudes |
The miser, starving his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at death shall creep out of his great estate of injustice, poor and naked and miserable.
Behavior | Conversation | Hypothesis | Man | Reputation |
Stupidity may be defined as mental slowness in speech and action.
Neglect | Reputation |
Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo
What is the use of beauty in woman? Provided a woman is physically well made and capable of bearing children, she will always be good enough in the opinion of economists. What is the use of music? -- of painting? Who would be fool enough nowadays to prefer Mozart to Carrel, Michael Angelo to the inventor of white mustard? There is nothing really beautiful save what is of no possible use. Everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and man's needs are low and disgusting, like his own poor, wretched nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet. For my part, saving these gentry's presence, I am of those to whom superfluities are necessaries, and I am fond of things and people in inverse ratio to the service they render me. I prefer a Chinese vase with its mandarins and dragons, which is perfectly useless to me, to a utensil which I do use, and the particular talent of mine which I set most store by is that which enables me not to guess logogriphs and charades. I would very willingly renounce my rights as a Frenchman and a citizen for the sight of an undoubted painting by Raphael, or of a beautiful nude woman, -- Princess Borghese, for instance, when she posed for Canova, or Julia Grisi when she is entering her bath. I would most willingly consent to the return of that cannibal, Charles X., if he brought me, from his residence in Bohemia, a case of Tokai or Johannisberg; and the electoral laws would be quite liberal enough, to my mind, were some of our streets broader and some other things less broad. Though I am not a dilettante, I prefer the sound of a poor fiddle and tambourines to that of the Speaker's bell. I would sell my breeches for a ring, and my bread for jam. The occupation which best befits civilized man seems to me to be idleness or analytically smoking a pipe or cigar. I think highly of those who play skittles, and also of those who write verse. You may perceive that my principles are not utilitarian, and that I shall never be the editor of a virtuous paper, unless I am converted, which would be very comical.
Blush | Bride | Civilization | Marriage | Modesty | Reputation | Right | Society | Wife | World | Society | Old | Think |
So many read good books and get nothing, because they read them over cursorily, slightly, superficially.
If Providence did beards devise, To prove the wearers of them wise, A fulsome goat would then, by nature, Excel each other human creature
I have lent myself willingly as the subject of a great experiment, which was to prove that an administration conducting itself with integrity and common understanding cannot be battered down even by the falsehoods of a licentious press. . . . The fact being once established that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave it to others to restore it to its strength by recalling it within the pale of truth. Within that it is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and civil liberty.
Man | Reputation | Will |
From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation.
Circumstances | Death | Question | Reputation | Society | Time | Society |
I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.
Enough | Experience | Man | Reputation | Will |
No man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him.
Man | Nothing | Reputation | Will | Loss |
No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it...To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.
Ecstasy | Man | Office | Reputation | Will |