This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The person who gets stuck on trivial prosperity will not attain great prosperity.
But, orderly to end where I begun, our wills and fates do so contrary run that our devices still are overthrown; our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. Hamlet, Act iii, Scene 2
BENEDICK: What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living? BEATRICE: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.
But old folks—many feign as they were dead, unwieldy, slow, heavy, and pale as lead.
DON PEDRO: To be merry best becomes you; for, out o' question, you were born in a merry hour. BEATRICE: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under than was I born. Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii, Scene 1
Daniel Gilbert, fully Daniel Todd Gilbert, aka Professor Happiness
'Reality' is a movie generated by our brains. Because we don't realize this, we are far too confident that the stuff appearing in the movie is actually 'out there' in the world when, in fact, it's not.
Liberty is one of the best of all sublunary advantages. I would willingly therefore communicate knowledge, without infringing, or with as little possible violence to, the volition and individual judgment of the person to be instructed.
Accident | Consideration | Contradiction | Control | Experiment | Father | Indulgence | Little | Man | Means | Mind | Nothing | Passion | Persuasion | Power | Trust | Will | Happiness |
Actions seems to follow feeling, but really actions and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.
Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things.
Evil | Good | Man | Melancholy | Reality | Thought | Happiness | Thought |
It would probably astound each of us beyond measure to be let into his neighbors mind and to find how different the scenery was there from that of his own.
Resignation | Stoic | Universe | Happiness |
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
The book which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, does not commonly make friends with you.
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
If he was not commonplace, it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which was simply clear and practical, but through some combination of qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women call him sweet--a word of theirs which conveys otherwise indefinable excellences.
Appreciation | Good | Knowledge | Nothing | Will | Appreciation | Happiness |
Read whatever chapter of Scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it -- yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon Him.