This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted...
Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it as earned.
The firmness with which the people have withstood the late abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false, and to form a correct judgment between them.
Character | Death | Good | Law | Mercy | Murder | Object | Power | Public | Security | Time | Treason | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Murder |
Shake off all fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived have forced me to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions.
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each it’s true and due fulfillment.
Existence | Grief | Life | Life | Passion | Writing | Vice |
There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy.
There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.
They (religions) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide.
Art | Enlightenment | Intolerance | Literature | Mankind | Passion | Reason | Rhetoric | Service | Slander | Virtue | Virtue | Slander | Art | Intellect |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
Is not life in itself a thing of goodness, irrespective of whether the course it takes for us can be called a 'happy' one?
I believe the defenders of intelligent design deserve our gratitude for challenging a scientific world view that owes some of the passion displayed by its adherents precisely to the fact that it is thought to liberate us from religion. That world view is ripe for displacement....
They boldly will usurp Moses chair, without any study or preparation. They would have their mouths reverenced as the mouths of the Sybils, who spoke nothing but was registered; yet nothing comes from their mouths but gross, full-stomached tautology. They sweat, they blunder, they bounce and plunge in the pulpit, but all is voice and no substance; they deaf men's ears, but not edify. Scripture peradventure they come off thick and threefold with, but it is so ugly daubed, plastered and patched on, so peevishly specked and applied, as if a botcher with a number of satin and velvet shreds should clout and mend leather doublets and cloth breeches.
We must begin by frankly admitting that the first place in which to go looking for the world is not outside us but in ourselves. We are the world. In the deepest ground of our being we remain in metaphysical contact with the whole of that creation in which we are only small parts. Through our senses and our minds, our loves, needs, and desires, we are implicated, without possibility of evasion, in this world of matter and of men, of things and of persons, which not only affect us and change our lives but are also affected and changed by us…The question, then, is not to speculate about how we are to contact the world – as if we were somehow in outer space – but how to validate our relationship, give it a fully honest and human significance, and make it truly productive and worthwhile for our world.
Acceptance | Charity | Grace | Humility | Love | Truth | Virtue | Virtue |
Calvinism is the belief (1) That there are three Gods (2) That good works, or the love of our neighbor are nothing (3) That faith is everything, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit in its faith (4) That reason in religion