This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch, A living-dead man. -The Comedy of Errors. Act v. Sc. 1.
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And now, my honey love, Will we return unto thy father's house And revel it as bravely as the best, With silken coats and caps and golden rings, With ruffs and cuffs and farthingales and things; With scarfs and fans and double change of brav'ry, With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knav'ry. The Taming of the Shrew (Petruchio at IV, iii)
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
Authority bears of a credent bulk That no particular scandal once can touch;; But it confounds the breather.
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Blood hath been shed ere now, i' th' olden time, Ere humane stature purged the gentle weal; Ay, and since too, murders have been performed Too terrible for the ear. The time has been That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end. But now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools. This is more strange Than such a murder is. Macbeth (Macbeth at III, iv)
Blest are those whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, that they are not a pipe for fortune's finger to sound what stop she please. Hamlet, Act iii, Scene 2
But this same day must end that work the ides of March begun; and whether we shall meet again I know not. Therefore our everlasting farewell take: forever, and forever, farewell, Cassius! If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; if not, why, then, this parting was well made. Julius Caesar, Act v, Scene 1
Blind fear that seeing reason leads finds safer footing than blind reason stumbling without fear. To fear the worst oft cures the worst. Troilus and Cressida, Act I, Scene 8
But all the story of the night told over, and their minds transfigur'd so together, more witnesseth than fancy's images, and grows to something of great constancy, but howsoever strange, and admirable. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act v, Scene 1
Brutus had rather be a villager than to repute himself a son of Rome under these hard conditions as this time is like to lay upon us.
Defect of manners, want of government, pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain; the least of which, haunting a nobleman, loseth men's hearts, and leaves behind a stain upon the beauty of all parts besides; beguiling them of commendation. Henry IV, Part I, Act iii, Scene 1
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Obey this may be right but beware of reverence. Government is nothing but regulated force force is its appropriate claim upon your attention. It is the business of individuals to persuade the tendency of concentrated strength, is only to give consistency and permanence to an influence more compendious than persuasion.
What indeed is life, unless so far as it is enjoyed It does not merit the name.
Consider how the desperate fight; despair strikes wild,--but often fatal too-- and in the mad encounter wins success.
O cursed ambition, thou devouring bird, how dost thou from the field of honesty pick every grain of profit or delight, and mock the reaper's toil!
If merely "feeling good" could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
How the time loiters in expectation! Then the mind drags the dead burden of a hundred years in one short moment's space. The nimble heart beats with impatient throbs,--sick of delay, and pants to be at ease.
I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.
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