This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
Some writers thrive on the contact with the commerce of success; others are corrupted by it. Perhaps, like losing one's virginity, it is not as bad (or as good) as one feared it was going to be.
Appearance | Giving | Piety | Public | Old |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Aid | Future | Government | Law | Nothing | People | Government | Child |
The main thing is, it seems to me, that these revolutionary changes will enable us to escape from the rather antiquated straitjacket of this bipolar view of the world, and to enter at last into an era of multi-polarity. That is, into an era in which all of us, large and small, former slaves and former masters, will be able to create what your great President Lincoln called the family of man
Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
Self-love fools man with false opinion that earth, air, water, fire, the stars we see, though stronger and more beautiful than we, feel nought, love not, but move for us alone.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The law cannot equalize mankind in spite of nature.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The idea that science can and should be organized according to rules both fixed and universal is unrealistic and pernicious.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
It is not true that men are better in poverty than in wealth.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Women and young people develop their separate estimates of their tastes.
Appearance | Blame | Justice | Law | Order | Rights | Rule | Universe |
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
Honor | Life | Life | Love | Tenderness |
Laws which are in advance of public sentiment are generally but a dead letter.
Law | Uncertainty |
Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun
The more you study Buddhism, the more you should understand. You shouldn't become more confused. Recognize the truth and open up your "mine of wisdom."
Aspiration | Divinity | Dynamic | Good | Honor | Nature | Practice | Aspiration |
When a tradesman is about to weigh his goods, he first of all looks to his scales and sees that his weights are right. And so for all wise, or safe, or profitable self-examination, we are not to look to frames, or feelings, or to the conduct of others, but to God's word, which is the only true standard of decision.
God | Honor | Position | Providence | God |
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
With regard to the duration of human life, there does not appear to have existed from the earliest ages of the world to the present moment the smallest permanent symptom or indication of increasing prolongation.
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
The lower classes of people in Europe may at some future period be much better instructed then they are at present; they may be taught to employ the little spare time they have in many better ways than at the ale-house; they may live under better and more equal laws than they have hitherto done, perhaps, in any country; and I even conceive it possible, though not probable, that they may have more leisure; but it is not in the nature of things, that they can be awarded such a quantity of money or substance, as will allow them all to marry early, in the full confidence that they shall be able to provide with ease for a numerous family.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
The purpose of a university should be to make a son as unlike his father as possible. By the time a man has grown old enough to have a son in college he has specialized. The university should generalize the treatment of its undergraduates, should struggle to put them in touch with every force of life.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.
Government | Individual | Law | Little | Government | Privilege |