This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
He that resolves upon any great and good end, has, by that very resolution, scaled the chief barrier to it. - He will find such resolution removing difficulties, searching out or making means, giving courage for despondency, and strength for weakness, and like the star to the wise men of old, ever guiding him nearer and nearer to perfection.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men.
Credit | Government | Growth | Opinion | System | Government |
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
The great question is whether man shall start forwards with accelerated velocity towards illimitable, and hitherto unconceived improvement, or be condemned to a perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
A man is the part he plays among his fellows. He is not isolated; he cannot be. His life is made up of the relations he bears to others - is made or marred by those relations, guided by them, judged by them, expressed in them. There is nothing else upon which he can spend his spirit - nothing else that we can see. It is by these he gets his spiritual growth; it is by these we see his character revealed, his purpose, his gifts. A few (men) act as those who have mastered the secrets of a serious art, with deliberate subordination of themselves to the great end and motive of the play. These have "found themselves," and have all the ease of a perfect adjustment.
Government | Little | Opinion | Government |
Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbors, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition.
Control | Excellence | Justice | Opinion | Play | Public | Reason | Restraint | Spirit | Excellence | Talent |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.
Government | Man | Opinion | World | Parting | Government |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Whate'er my doom; it cannot be unhappy: God hath given me the boon of resignation.
Opinion |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
You have laid upon me this double obligation: "we are relying upon you, Mr. President, to keep us out of war, but we are relying upon you, Mr. President, to keep the honor of the nation unstained."
Convictions | Opinion |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
The only reason I read a book is because I cannot see and converse with the man who wrote it.
Government | Opinion | People | War | Government | Old | Think |
Tobias Smollett, fully Tobias George Smollett
A mere index hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail.
DON PEDRO: Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick. BEATRICE: Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say I have lost it. DON PEDRO: You have put him down, lady, you have put him down. BEATRICE: So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools. Much Ado About Nothing, Act ii, Scene 1
William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
Some associations may revivify it enough to make it flash, after a long oblivion, into consciousness.
Beauty and hideousness, love and cruelty, life and death keep house together in indissoluble partnership; and there gradually steals over us, instead of the old warm notion of a man-loving Deity, that of an awful power that neither hates nor loves, but rolls all things together meaninglessly to a common doom. This is an uncanny, a sinister, a nightmare view of life, and its peculiar poisonousness, lies expressly in our holding two things together which cannot possibly agree.
A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
William Melmoth, wrote under pseudonym Sir Thomas Fitzosborne
Epicurus, we are told, left behind him three hundred volumes of his own works, wherein he had not inserted a single quotation; and we have it upon the authority of Varro’s own words that he himself composed four hundred and ninety books. Seneca assures us that Didymus the grammarian wrote no less than four thousand; but Origen, it seems, was yet more prolific, and extended his performances even to six thousand treatises. It is obvious to imagine with what sort of materials the productions of such expeditious workmen were wrought up: sound thoughts and well-matured reflections could have no share, we may be sure, in these hasty performances. Thus are books multiplied, whilst authors are scarce; and so much easier is it to write than to think! But shall I not myself, Palamedes, prove an instance that it is so, if I suspend any longer your own more important reflections by interrupting you with such as mine?
Absurd | Birth | Circumstances | Gloom | Hypothesis | Light | Observation | Opinion | Principles | World |