This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
O sir, we quarrel in print, by the book, as you have books for good manners. I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct, and you may avoid that too, with an If. I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of tem thought but of an If: as, 'If you said so, then I said so'; and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your If is the only peacemaker. Much virtue in If.
Men |
O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide! How couldst thou drain the lifeblood of the child, to bid the father wipe his eyes withal, and yet be seen to bear a woman's face? Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible; thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.
What often prevents our abandoning ourselves to a single vice is, our having more than one.
Business | Men | Friendship | Business |
O, when degree is shaked, which is the ladder of all high designs, the enterprise is sick. How could communities, degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, peaceful commerce from dividable shores, the primogeniture and due of birth, prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels, but by degree stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark what discord follows. Each thing meets in mere oppugnancy.
Our hap is loss, our hope but sad despair, our ranks are broke and ruin follows us.
Men |
Of all the wonders that i have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.
Men |
Old Nestor—whose wit was mouldy ere your grandsires had nails on their toes.
Men |
POLONIUS:Do you know me, my lord? HAMLET: Excellent well; you're a fishmonger. POLONIUS: Not I, my lord. Hamlet Then I would you were so honest a man. POLONIUS: Honest, my lord! HAMLET: Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. POLONIUS: That's very true, my lord. HAMLET: [Reads] For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion, — Have you a daughter? POLONIUS:I have, my lord. HAMLET: Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive; — friend, look to 't. POLONIUS:[Aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter: — yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this.
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest, and despair most fits. All's Well That Ends Well (Helena at II, i)
O, that men's ears should be To counsel deaf, but not to flattery! The Life of Timon of Athens (Apemantus at I, ii)
ORLANDO: Who stays it still withal? ROSALIND: With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how Time moves.
He was himself and he had lost the speed he started with, and he was left behind.
A great many men — some comparatively small men now — if put in the right position, would be Luthers and Columbuses.
Competition | Love | Men | Opportunity |
My Lord Anson, at the Admiralty, sends word to Chatham, then confined to his chamber by one of his most violent attacks of the gout, that it is impossible for him to fit out a naval expedition within the period to which he is limited. "Impossible!" cried Chatham, glaring at the messenger; "who talks to me of impossibilities?" Then starting to his feet, and forcing out great drops of agony on his brow with the excruciating torment of the effort, he exclaimed, "Tell Lord Anson that he serves under a minister who treads on impossibilities!"
Prince Shōtoku, born Shotoku Taishi, aka Prince Umayado or Prince Kamitsumiya
The Ministers and officials of the state should make proper behavior their first principle, for if the superiors do not behave properly, the inferiors are disorderly; if inferiors behave improperly, offenses will naturally result. Therefore when lord and vassal behave with propriety, the distinctions of rank are not confused: when the people behave properly the Government will be in good order.
Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is an humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble.
Enough | Genius | Men | Nations | Thought | Govern | Thought |
Those old ages are like the landscape that shows best in the purple distance, all verdant and smooth, and bathed in mellow light.
Sydney Smith playfully says that common sense was invented by Socrates, that philosopher having been one of its most conspicuous exemplars in conducting the contest of practical sagacity against stupid prejudice and illusory beliefs.
Generosity | Gluttony | Men | Taste | Happiness |