This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is not a single outward mark of courtesy that does not have a deep moral basis.
We are not immortal, but our acts are... The question is not why we exist but whether we deserve to exist as supposedly rational beings if we act like conquerors rather than caring beings willing to share the planet with all those who are less powerful, and to act with restraint in respecting the needs of others and all life to come. As a species, we are on trial to see whether rationality was an advance or a tragic mistake.
Character | Life | Life | Mistake | Question | Rationality | Restraint | Trial |
Jonathan Swift, pen names, M.B. Drapier, Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff
Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker.
Character | Conversation | Insult | Restraint | Wit | Insult |
Francis Walsingham, fully Sir Francis Walsingham
Every virtue gives a man a degree of felicity in some kind: honesty gives a man a good report; justice, estimation; prudence, respect; courtesy and liberality, affection; temperance gives health; fortitude, a quiet mind, not to be moved by any adversity.
Adversity | Character | Courtesy | Estimation | Fortitude | Good | Health | Honesty | Justice | Man | Mind | Prudence | Prudence | Quiet | Respect | Virtue | Virtue |
There is no outward sign of courtesy that does not rest on a deep moral foundation.
Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and imitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy, or despotism in some form, is all that is left.
Anarchy | Majority | Necessity | People | Restraint | Rule | Wisdom |
By thoughtfulness, by restraint and self-control, the wise man may make for himself an island which no flood can overwhelm.
Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for, (including) the want of sufficient restraint upon their passions.
We may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindness about us at little expense. Some of them will fall on good ground, and grow up into benevolence in the minds of others, and all of them will bear fruit of happiness in the bosom whence they spring. Once blest are all the virtues; twice blest, sometimes.
Benevolence | Courtesy | Good | Kindness | Little | Will | Happiness |
God sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person, more than the restraint of ten vicious.
Miserable indeed is a world in which we have knowledge without understanding, criticism without appreciation, beauty without love, truth without passion, righteousness without mercy, and courtesy without a warm heart!
Appreciation | Beauty | Courtesy | Criticism | Heart | Knowledge | Love | Mercy | Passion | Righteousness | Truth | Understanding | World | Beauty |