This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
With money we will get men, said Caesar, and with men we will get money. Nor should our assembly [the Virginia Legislature] be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes, and conclude that these unlimited powers will never be abused, because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin [Great Britain], will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.
We believe no more in Bonaparte's fighting merely for the liberties of the seas than in Great Britain's fighting for the liberties of mankind. The object is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other nations.
We were laboring under a dropsical fullness of circulating medium. Nearly all of it is now called in by the banks, who have the regulation of the safety-valves of our fortunes, and who condense and explode them at their will. Lands in this State cannot now be sold for a year’s rent; and unless our Legislature have wisdom enough to effect a remedy by a gradual diminution only of the medium, there will be a general revolution of property in this state.
Authority | Battle | Duty | Liberty | Mankind | Nations | Right | War | Friends |
Whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself.
Care | Civilization | Contempt | Economics | Good | Life | Life | Money | Optimism | People | Philosophy | Will | Friends |
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne
It wounds a man less to confess that he has failed in any pursuit through idleness, neglect, the love of pleasure, etc., etc., which are his own faults, than through incapacity and unfitness, which are the faults of his nature.
Advice | Deference | Praise | Thinking | Following | Friends | Think |
The Caverns of the Grave I’ve seen, And these I show’d to England’s Queen. But now the Caves of Hell I view, Who shall I dare to show them to? What mighty soul in Beauty’s form Shall dauntless view the infernal storm? Egremont’s Countess can control The flames of Hell that round me roll; If she refuse, I still go on Till the Heavens and Earth are gone, Still admir’d by noble minds, Follow’d by Envy on the winds, Re-engrav’d time after time, Ever in their youthful prime, My designs unchang’d remain. Time may rage, but rage in vain. For above Time’s troubled fountains, On the great Atlantic Mountains, In my Golden House on high, There they shine eternally.
Experience | Good | Friends | Think |
Florentine Ingratitude: Sir Joshua sent his own portrait to The birthplace of Michael Angelo, And in the hand of the simpering fool He put a dirty paper scroll, And on the paper, to be polite, Did ‘Sketches by Michael Angelo’ write. The Florentines said ‘’Tis a Dutch-English bore, Michael Angelo’s name writ on Rembrandt’s door.’ The Florentines call it an English fetch, For Michael Angelo never did sketch; 10 Every line of his has meaning, And needs neither suckling nor weaning. ’Tis the trading English-Venetian cant To speak Michael Angelo, and act Rembrandt: It will set his Dutch friends all in a roar To write ‘Mich. Ang.’ on Rembrandt’s door; But you must not bring in your hand a lie If you mean that the Florentines should buy. Giotto’s circle or Apelles’ line Were not the work of sketchers drunk with wine; Nor of the city clock’s running … fashion; Nor of Sir Isaac Newton’s calculation.
Angels | Childhood | Father | Heaven | Revolution | Spirit | War | Blessed | Forgive | Friends |
Love to faults is always blind; Always is to joy inclin’d, Lawless, wing’d and unconfin’d, And breaks all chains from every mind. Deceit to secrecy confin’d, Lawful, cautious and refin’d; To anything but interest blind, And forges fetters for the mind.
Benevolence | Burial | Divinity | Enemy | God | Man | Marriage | Men | Murder | Receive | Smile | Time | Will | Wishes | Worship | Friendship | God | Murder | Forgive | Friends |
In the Italian Renaissance… there was no ‘subject-matter’. What we call subject matter now, was then painting itself. Subject matter came later on when parts of those works were taken out arbitrarily, when a man for no reason is sitting, standing or ling down. He became a bather, she became a bather; she was reclining; he just stood there looking ahead. That is when the posing in panting began… For really, when you think of all the life and death problems in the art of Renaissance, who cares if a Chevalier is laughing or that a young girl has a red blouse on.
Angels | Art | Change | Cost | Depression | Extravagance | Man | Money | Music | Relationship | Art | Friends |
In conclusion, I have endeavored, with what success has been already determined by the voice of my own country, to give a panorama of Irish life among the people … and in doing this, I can say with solemn truth that I painted them honestly and without reference to the existence of any particular creed or party.
Adventure | Appetite | Battle | Beauty | Consciousness | Consequences | Father | Fighting | Friend | Influence | Love | Man | Means | Mirth | Nothing | Sense | Silence | Spirit | Vengeance | Will | Woe | Beauty | Friends |
Every man plays the fool once in his life, but to marry is playing the fool all one's life long.
Love | Tenderness | Words | Friends |
Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone to rev'rence what is ancient, and can plead a course of long observance for its use, that even servitude, the worst of ills, because deliver'd down from sire to son, is kept and guarded as a sacred thing!
Business | Dread | Man | Safe | Thought | Business | Friends | Thought |
Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years—generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco—and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad—ROBINSON CRUSOE. When I want advice—ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much—ROBINSON CRUSOE. I have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my service. On my lady's last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and ROBINSON CRUSOE put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain.
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
I wish I could think of something else as true and as good. Some of my very best friends are lawyers, and are yet, but they don't think their fraternity is some almighty deity. The biggest part of the lawyers are regular guys the same as most of them are honest and high type in their profession, but they know there is undesirable among them, and they are not going to faint when it's mentioned.
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
Now if there is one thing that we do worse than any other nation, it is try and manage somebody else's affairs.
Confidence | Will | Friends |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
Successful colleges will start laying plans for a new stadium; unsuccessful ones will start hunting a new coach.
Friends |