This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo
The famous courtesan Clarimonde died recently, as the result of an orgy which lasted eight days and eight nights. It was something infernally magnificent. They revived the abominations of the feasts of Belshazzar and Cleopatra. Great God! what an age this is in which we live! The guests were served by swarthy slaves speaking an unknown tongue, who to my mind had every appearance of veritable demons; the livery of the meanest among them might have served as a gala-costume for an emperor. There have always been current some very strange stories concerning this Clarimonde, and all her lovers have come to a miserable or a violent end. It has been said that she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I believe that she was Beelzebub in person.
Critic | Day | Erudition | Knowledge | Magnanimity | Men | Patience | People |
The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise.
Achievement | Charity | Consideration | Equality | Moderation | Patience | People | Policy | Problems | Resolution | Spirit | Moderation |
Beautiful as is the morning of day, so is the morning of life.—Fallen though we are, there remains a purity, modesty, ingenuousness and tenderness of conscience about childhood, that looks as if the glory of Eden yet lingered over it, like the light of the day on the hill tops, at even, when the sun is down.
Experience | God | Patience | God |
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Government | Little | Luck | Opportunity | Patience | Principles | Public | Suffering | War | Luck | Government | Winning |
Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men.
Courage | Fortitude | God | Intelligence | Light | Patience | Power | Sacrifice | Truth | Will | God |
If we are fools enough to remain at the mercy of the people who want to sell us happiness, it will be impossible for us ever to be content with anything. How would they profit if we became content? We would no longer need their new product. The last thing the salesman wants is for the buyer to become content. You are of no use in our affluent society unless you are always just about to grasp what you never have. The Greeks were not as smart as we are. In their primitive way they put Tantalus in hell. Madison Avenue, on the contrary, would convince us that Tantalus is in heaven.
Good | Patience | Toleration |
Every man becomes the image of the God he adores. He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes dead. He who loves corruption rots. He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow. He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perishing.
Acceptance | Humility | Men | Patience | Solitude | Trials | Work |
I looked for my soul but my soul I could not see. I looked for my God but my God eluded me. I looked for a friend and then I found all three.
Artifice | Children | Death | Earth | Experience | God | Light | Love | Man | Men | Patience | Price | Prosperity | Prudence | Prudence | Wife | Wisdom | God |
A tale should be judicious, clear, succinct; the language plain, and incidents well link'd; tell not as new what ev'ry body knows; and, new or old, still hasten to a close.
Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
Time possesses nothing but the negative virtue of helping to wear itself out.
Patience | Resolution | Story |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
Take a look at those two open hands of yours. They are tools with which to serve, make friends, and reach out for the best in life. Open hands open the way to achievement Put them to work today.
Patience |