This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
AUTOLYCUS: I am a poor fellow, sir. CAMILLO: Why, be so still; here's nobody will steal that from thee.
Vice |
Appear thou in the likeness of sigh; Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied! Cry but 'Ay me! pronounce but 'love' and 'dove': Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word, One nickname for her purblind son and heir Young Abraham Cupid, he that shot so true When King Cophetus loved the beggar maid! Romeo and Juliet, Act ii, Scene 1
Create her child of spleen; that it may live, and be a thwart disnatured torment to her. Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth, with cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks, King Lear, Act I, Scene 4
Vice |
If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.
Once annihilate the quackery of government, and the most homebred understanding might be strong enough to detect the artifices of the state juggler that would mislead him.
Better | Conduct | Consideration | Family | Father | Improvement | Justice | Justify | Life | Life | Lying | Magic | Man | Sense | Truth | Understanding | Will | Work | Worth | Vice |
The more profoundly we study this wonderful book [the Bible], and the more closely we observe its divine precept, the better citizens we will become and the higher will be our destiny as a nation.
Mission |
This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy. Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet. In the practical life of the individual, we know how his whole gloom or glee about any present fact depends on the remoter schemes and hopes with which it stands related. Its significance and framing give it the chief part of its value. Let it be known to lead nowhere, and however agreeable it may be in its immediacy, its glow and gilding vanish. The old man, sick with an insidious internal disease, may laugh and quaff his wine at first as well as ever, but he knows his fate now, for the doctors have revealed it; and the knowledge knocks the satisfaction out of all these functions. They are partners of death and the worm is their brother, and they turn to a mere flatness.
Art | Cost | History | Human nature | Law | Mission | Nations | Nature | Need | Time | Work | Art |
What seems generosity is often disguised ambition, that despises small to run after greater interests.
Vice |
Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment
Common Sense | Object | Sense | Old | Vice |
The rise of the dramas in the thirteenth century, and the rise of the great novels in a later period, together with their frank glorification of love and the joys of life, may be called the Third Renaissance.
Mission | Position | Superiority |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And trade is art, and art's philosophy, in Paris.
Mission |
That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.
Vice |
What is that one crucifixion compared to the daily kind any insomniac endures?
Angelique, with both hands open, lying limply on her knees, was giving herself. And Felicien remembered the evening on which she had run barefoot through the grass, so adorable that he had pursued her, and whispered in her ear, I love you. And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, I love you. And he understood full well that only now had she replied, with the same cry, I love you, the eternal cry that had finally emerged from her wide-open heart. I love you... Take me, carry me away, I am yours.
Care | Cause | Crime | Day | Disgrace | Earth | Exploit | God | Important | Life | Life | Love | Mother | Nature | Pain | Suffering | Tears | World | God | Vice |
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out.
Civilized society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this sense everything that man does is religious and heroic, and yet in danger of being fictitious and fallible.