This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The Golden Net - Three Virgins at the break of day:— ‘Whither, young man, whither away? Alas for woe! alas for woe!’ They cry, and tears for ever flow. The one was cloth’d in flames of fire, The other cloth’d in iron wire, The other cloth’d in tears and sighs Dazzling bright before my eyes. They bore a Net of golden twine To hang upon the branches fine. Pitying I wept to see the woe That Love and Beauty undergo, To be consum’d in burning fires And in ungratified desires, And in tears cloth’d night and day Melted all my soul away. When they saw my tears, a smile That did Heaven itself beguile, Bore the Golden Net aloft, As on downy pinions soft, Over the Morning of my day. Underneath the net I stray, Now entreating Burning Fire Now entreating Iron Wire, Now entreating Tears and Sighs— O! when will the morning rise?
Ages are all equal. But genius is always above the age.
Cruelty has a human heart, and jealousy a human face; terror the human form divine, and secrecy the human dress. The human dress is forged iron, the human form a fiery forge, the human face a furnace seal d, the human heart its hungry gorge.
History | Individual | Merit | Reason |
William Barrett, fully William Christopher Barrett
The chief movement of modernity, Kierkegaard holds, is a drift toward mass society, which means the death of the individual as life becomes ever more collectivized and externalized. The social thinking of the present age is determined, he says, by what might be called the Law of Large Numbers: it does not matter what quality each individual has, so long as we have enough individuals to add up to a large number – that is, to a crowd or mass. And where the mass is, there is truth – so the modern world believes.
Without Unceasing Practice nothing can be done. Practice is Art. If you leave off you are lost.
William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall
General jackdaw culture, very little more than a collection of charming miscomprehensions, untargeted enthusiasms, and a general habit of skimming.
Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
Cowper declares that the Iliad and Odyssey in Pope’s hands have no more the air of antiquity than if he had himself invented them.
Reason |
I am monarch of all I survey, my right there is none to dispute, from the centre all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute. O solitude! Where are the charms that sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, than reign in this horrible place.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
If we would indicate an idea which, throughout the whole course of history, has ever more and more widely extended its empire, or which, more than any other, testifies to the much-contested and still more decidedly misunderstood perfectibility of the whole human race, it is that of establishing our common humanity — of striving to remove the barriers which prejudice and limited views of every kind have erected among men, and to treat all mankind, without reference to religion, nation, or color, as one fraternity, one great community, fitted for the attainment of one object, the unrestrained development of the physical powers. This is the ultimate and highest aim of society.
Human nature | Men | Nature | Reason | Happiness |
Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
Books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful master who never used me ill!
Reason |
Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared. Sympathies that lie too deep for words, too deep almost for thoughts, are touched, at such times, by other charms than those which the senses feel and which the resources of expression can realize. The mystery which underlies the beauty of women is never raised above the reach of all expression until it has claimed kindred with the deeper mystery in our own souls.