This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A vigorous mind is as necessarily accompanied with violent passions as a great fire with great heat.
Mind |
War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert their natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow-citizens in a hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us. The very nature of affection and kindred, which were the bond of charity, whilst we agreed, become new incentives to hatred and rage, when the communion of our country is dissolved.
Body | Charity | Danger | Equity | Justice | Light | Manners | Nature | Obligation | People | Politics | Rage | Taste | War | Danger |
It is as common for men to change their taste as it is uncommon for them to change their inclination.
Change | Inclination | Men | Taste |
It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observation of time and place and of decency in general that what is called taste consists; and which is in reality no other that a more refined judgment. The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
Cause | Judgment | Manners | Observation | Reality | Skill | Taste | Time | Wrong |
Good taste is the product of judgment rather than of intellect.
Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
Good | Integrity | Intelligence | Sense | Taste |
Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him.
François Guizot, fully François Pierre Guillaume Guizot
The study of art is a taste at once engrossing and unselfish, which may be indulged without effort, and yet has the power of exciting the deepest emotions - a taste able to exercise and to gratify both the nobler and softer parts of our nature.
Art | Effort | Emotions | Nature | Power | Study | Taste | Art |
The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our observation.
Motives | Observation |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Live each season as it passes; breath the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Taste |
The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness - the taste and strain from the lees of the vat.
Bitterness | Sorrow | Taste |
The laws of nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the laws of man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the laws of nature, were man as unerring in his judgments as nature.
Cause | Earth | Forbearance | Inevitable | Man | Mercy | Nature | Punishment | Race |
If we judge objects merely according to concepts, then all representation of beauty is lost. Thus there can be no rule according to which anyone is to be forced to recognizes anything as beautiful... The beautiful is that which pleases universally without a concept... There can be no objective rule of taste which shall determine by means of concept what is beautiful.