This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
True happiness must arise from well-regulated affections, and an affection includes a duty.
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Appreciation | Beauty | Betrayal | Better | Children | Life | Life | People | Respect | World | Appreciation | Respect |
The feet carry the body as affection carries the soul.
A wise love regards not so much the gift of him who loves, as the love of him who gives. He esteems affection rather than valuables, and sets all gifts below the Beloved. A noble-minded lover rests not in the gift, but in Me above every gift.
Some degree of affection is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.
Human nature | Nature |
Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children. We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the infantile limitations.
George Augustus Sala, fully George Augustus Henry Sala
In the intercourse of social life, it is by little acts of watchful kindness recurring daily and hourly, by words, tones, gestures, looks, that affection is won and preserved.
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
Universal love is a glove without fingers, which fits all hands alike, and none closely; but true affection is like a glove with fingers, which fits one hand only, and sits closest to that one.
Love |
John Ruysbroeck or The Blessed John of Ruysbroeck, originally Jan van Ruusbroek
Knowledge of ourselves teaches us whence we come, where we are and whither we are going. We come from God and we are in exile; and it is because our potency of affection lends towards God that we are aware of this state of exile.
Judith Martin, née Perlman, pen name Miss Manners
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
The first thing men do when they have renounced pleasure, through decency, lassitude, or for the sake of health, is to condemn it in others. Such conduct denotes a kind of latent affection for the very things they left off; they would like no one to enjoy a pleasure they can no longer indulge in; and thus they show their feelings of jealousy.
Lord Peterborough, Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough and 2st Earl of Monmouth
How sacred, how beautiful, is the feeling of affection in pure and guileless bosoms! The proud may sneer at it, the fashionable may call it fable, the selfish and dissipated may affect to despise it; but the holy passion is surely of heaven, and is made evil by the corruptions of those whom it was sent to bless and to preserve.
Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
10 point formula for success: 1. Learn to remember names. Inefficiency at this point may indicate that your interest is not sufficiently outgoing. 2. Be a comfortable person so there is no strain in being with you. Be an old-shoe, old-hat kind of individual. 3. Acquire the quality of relaxed easy-going so that things do not ruffle you. 4. Don't be egotistical. Guard against the impression that you know it all. 5. Cultivate the quality of being interesting so people will get something of value from their association with you. 6. Study to get the "scratchy" elements out of your personality, even those of which you may be unconscious. 7. Sincerely attempt to heal, on an honest Christian basis, every msiunderstanding you have had or now have. Drain off your grievances. 8. Practice liking people until you learn to do so genuinely. 9. Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone's achievement, or express sympathy in sorrow or disappointment. 10. Give spiritual strength to people, and they will give genuine affection to you
Association | Impression | Opportunity | People | Practice | Sorrow | Strength | Study | Sympathy | Will | Association | Learn | Value |
Marguerite Yourcenar, pseudonym for Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour
The technique of a great seducer requires a facility and an indifference in passing from one object of affection to another which I could never have; however that may be, my loves have left me more often than I have left them, for I have never been able to understand how one could have enough of any beloved. The desire to count up exactly the riches which each new love brings us, and to see it change, and perhaps watch it grow old, accords ill with multiplicity of conquests.
Desire | Enough | Indifference | Love | Object | Riches | Riches | Understand |
Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.
Associates | Beauty | Crime | Dreams | Enemy | Feelings | God | Loathing | Love | Man | Qualities | Sympathy | Virtue | Virtue | Beauty | God | Friends | Happiness |