This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A sermon on a hat: "'The hat, my boy, the hat, whatever it may be, is in itself nothing--makes nothing, goes for nothing; but, be sure of it, everything is life depends upon the cock of the hat.' For how many men--we put it to your own experience, reader--have made their way through the thronging crowds that beset fortune, not by the innate worth and excellence of their hats, but simply, as Sampson Piebald has it, by 'the cock of their hats'? The cock's all."
Present |
Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?
Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy.
Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
Plenty of people despise money, but few know how to give it away.
O momentary grace of mortal men, which we more hunt for than the grace of God! Who builds his hope in air of your fair looks, lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, ready, with every nod, to tumble down into the fatal bowels of the deep.
Now I stand as one upon a rock, environed with a wilderness of sea, who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave, expecting ever when some envious surge will in his brinish bowels swallow him.
O my good lord, why are you thus alone? For what offense have I this fortnight been a banished woman from my Harry's bed? Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep? Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth, and start so often when thou sit'st alone? Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks and given my treasures and my rights of thee to thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy? In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watched, and heard thee murmur tales of iron wars, speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed, cry 'courage! To the field!' and thou hast talked of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, of Palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, of basilisks, of cannon, culverin, of prisoners' ransom, and of soldiers slain, and all the currents of a heady fight. Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war, and thus hath so bestirred thee in thy sleep, that beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow like bubbles in a late-disturbèd stream, and in thy face strange motions have appeared, such as we see when men restrain their breath on some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these? Some heavy business hath my lord in hand, and I must know it, else he loves me not. Henry IV, Act ii, Scene 3
O sir, to wilful men the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.
Past |
O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade justice to break her sword. One more, one more! Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, and love thee after. One more, and that's the last! So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep, but they are cruel tears. This sorrow's heavenly; it strikes where it doth love. She wakes.
O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide! How couldst thou drain the lifeblood of the child, to bid the father wipe his eyes withal, and yet be seen to bear a woman's face? Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible; thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.
Past cure I am, now Reason is past care, and frantic-mad with evermore unrest; my thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are, at random from the truth vainly express'd; for I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Present |
Press not a falling man too far; 'tis virtue: his faults lie open to the laws; let them, not you, correct him.
Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear I never more will break an oath with thee.