This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
One promises much, to avoid giving little.
Wit |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
It is our heart to determine the rank of our interests, and our reason to drive.
Perfection | Right | Wit |
Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive.
Bitterness | Evidence | Little | Reason | Wit |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century—when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all—and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?
Heaven | Journey | Life | Life | Love | Need | Wisdom | Wit | Work |
A goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! The Merchant of Venice, Act i, Scene 3
And yet by heaven I think my love as rare as any that she belie with false compare. Sonnet 130
Chain me with roaring bears; or shut me nightly in a charnel-house, o'er-covered quite with dead men's rattling bones, with reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; or bid me go into a new-made grave, and hide me with a dead man in his shroud; things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble; and I will do it without Fear or Doubt, to live an unstain'd Wife of my sweet Love. Romeo and Juliet, Act iv, Scene 1
Danger knows full well that Caesar is more dangerous than he. We are two lions littered in one day, and I the elder and more terrible, and Caesar shall go forth. Julius Caesar, Act ii, Scene 2
Wit |
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: by that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, the image of his maker, hope to win by it? Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee; corruption wins not more than honesty. Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, to silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not: let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, thy god's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, o cromwell, thou fall'st a blessed martyr! Serve the king; and,-prithee, lead me in: there take an inventory of all I have, to the last penny; 'tis the king's: my robe, and my integrity to heaven, is all i dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell! Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies. Henry VIII, Act iii, Scene 2
Diseased Nature oftentimes breaks forth in strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth is with a kind of colic pinched and vexed by the imprisoning of unruly wind within the womb, which, for enlargement striving, shakes the old beldame earth and topples down steeples and mossgrown towers. King Henry IV. Part I. Act iii. Sc. 1.
Wit |
What keeps persons down in the world, besides lack of capacity, is not a philosophical contempt of riches or honors, but thoughtlessness and improvidence, a love of sluggish torpor, and of present gratification. It is not from preferring virtue to wealth--the goods of the mind to those of fortune--that they take no thought for the morrow; but from want of forethought and stern self-command. The restless, ambitious man too often directs these qualities to an unworthy object; the contented man is generally deficient in the qualities themselves. The one is a stream that flows too often in a wrong channel, and needs to have its course altered, the other is a stagnant pool.
A man who is always well satisfied with himself is seldom so with others, and others as little pleased with him.
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
The greatest miracle of love is the cure of coquetry.
O place, O form, How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit, Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming!
Nature does not capriciously scatter her secrets as golden gifts to lazy pets and luxurious darlings, but imposes tasks when she presents opportunities, and uplifts him whom she would inform. The apple that she drops at the feet of Newton is but a coy invitation to follow her to the stars.