This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The intention of never deceiving often exposes us to deception.
There are more defects in temperament than in the mind.
The common practice of cunning is the sign of a small genius.-It almost always happens that those who use it to cover themselves in one place, lay themselves open in another.
Youth changes its inclinations through heat of blood; old age perseveres in them through the power of habit.
Woman |
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell That he hath turned a heaven unto a hell!
Dreams | Good | Little | Mind | Misfortune | Prayer | Time | Misfortune | Old |
ORSINO: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and won, than women's are… For women are as roses, whose fair flow'r being once display'd doth fall that very hour. VIOLA: And so they are; alas, that they are so! To die, even when they to perfection grow!
Others there are who, trimm'd in forms and visages of duty, keep yet their hearts attending on themselves, and, throwing but shows of service on their lords, do well thrive by them and when they have lin'd their coats do themselves homage. These fellows have some soul and such a one do I profess myself...In following him, I follow but myself; heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, But seeming so, for my peculiar end
ORSINO: How dost thou like this tune? VIOLA: It gives a very echo to the seat where love is throned.
Perfection | Praise |
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
We are not told of things that happened to specific people exactly as they happened; but the beginning is when there are good things and bad things, things that happen in this life which one never tires of seeing and hearing about, things which one cannot bear not to tell of and must pass on for all generations. If the storyteller wishes to speak well, then he chooses the good things; and if he wishes to hold the reader’s attention he chooses bad things, extraordinarily bad things. Good things and bad things alike, they are things of this world and no other. Writers in other countries approach the matter differently. Old stories in our own are different from new. There are differences in the degree of seriousness. But to dismiss them as lies is itself to depart from the truth. Even in the writ which the Buddha drew from his noble heart are parables, devices for pointing obliquely at the truth. To the ignorant they may seem to operate at cross purposes. The Greater Vehicle is full of them, but the general burden is always the same. The difference between enlightenment and confusion is of about the same order as the difference between the good and the bad in a romance. If one takes the generous view, then nothing is empty and useless.
Care | Cause | Compassion | Despise | Fault | Good | Listening | Object | Opinion | People | Slander | Taste | Will | World | Slander | Fault |
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
If husband and wife have the habit of staying together, never leaving one another, and following each other around within the limited space of their own rooms, then they will lust after and take liberties with one another. From such action improper language will arise between the two This kind of discussion may lead co licentiousness. But of licentiousness will be born a heart of disrespect to the husband. Such a result comes from not knowing that one should stay in one's proper place.
Authority | Conduct | Control | Husband | Men | Nothing | Order | Purpose | Purpose | Relationship | Wife |
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
Now For self-culture nothing equals respect for others. To counteract firmness nothing equals compliance. Consequently it can be said that the Way of respect and acquiescence is woman's most important principle of conduct. So respect may be defined as nothing other than holding on to that which is permanent; and acquiescence nothing other than being liberal and generous. Those who are steadfast in devotion know that they should stay in their proper places; those who are liberal and generous esteem others, and honor and serve chem.
Age | Authority | Books | Boys | Children | Conduct | Education | Men | Present | Relationship | Rites | Rule | Study | Teach | Understand |
I have not been animated in my life to fight against race and sex discrimination simply because of my own identity. That would mean that one must be South African to fight apartheid, or a poor white in Appalachia to fight poverty, or Jewish to fight anti-Semitism. And I just reject that conception of how struggles should be waged.
Nobody is going to buy into the next million [employees] without having some sense what happened to the first million... This is too big for me to put my faith in.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
A living dog's better than a dead lion.
Little |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Rosalind flung herself into the drawing-room; it was honey-colored and lovely in the pale spring light, another little clock was ticking in the corner, there were more bowls of primroses and black-eyed, lowering anemones. The tarnished mirror on the wall distorted and reproved her angry face in its mild mauveness.
Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.
Our message is clear. We count. Children count. Everybody counts, so count everybody,
Better | Equality | Example | Family | Organization |