This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
As I have seen a swan wth bootless labour swim against the tide and spend her strength with over-matching waves. Henry VI, Act I, Scene 4
As for my wife, I would you had her spirit in such another; the third o' th' world is yours, which with a snaffle you may pace easy, but not such a wife.
Can’t help it? Nonsense! What we are is up to us. Our bodies are like gardens and our willpower is like the gardener. Depending on what we plant—weeds or lettuce, or one kind of herb rather than a variety, the garden will either be barren and useless, or rich and productive. If we didn’t have rational minds to counterbalance our emotions and desires, our bodily urges would take over. We’d end up in ridiculous situations. Thankfully, we have reason to cool our raging lusts. In my opinion, what you call love is just an offshoot of lust. Othello, Act I, Scene 3
Better | Care | Duty | Fear | Flattery | Little | Lord | Man | Men | Mind | Time | Will | Words | Following |
Come, gentle night, — come, loving black brow'd night, give me my Romeo; and when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of Heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun. Romeo and Juliet, Act iii, Scene 2
Fault | Means | Mother | Receive | Shame | Temper | Will | Words | Fault | Guilty |
Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year. Hamlet, Act iii, Scene 2
Doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot ensure in his age. Much Ado About Nothing, Act ii, Scene 3
Desire |
Daniel Gilbert, fully Daniel Todd Gilbert, aka Professor Happiness
If someone offered you a pill that would make you permanently happy, you would be well advised to run fast and run far. Emotion is a compass that tells us what to do, and a compass that perpetually stuck on north is worthless.
Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer? Henry IV, Act ii, Scene 2
Iris Murdoch, aka Dame Jean Iris Murdoch
I hate solitude, but i'm afraid if intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself.
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give happiness. Thomas Jefferson We never enjoy perfect happiness; our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness; some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.
Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.
Individual | Power |
Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone.
There is at present in the world a cold reserve that keeps man at a distance from man. There is an art in the practice of which individuals communicate forever, without anyone telling his neighbor what estimate he forms of his attainments and character, how they ought to be employed, and how to be improved. There is a sort of domestic tactics, the object of which is to elude curiosity, and keep up the tenor of conversation, without the disclosure either of our feelings or opinions. The friend of justice will have no object more deeply at heart than the annihilation of this duplicity. The man whose heart overflows with kindness for his species will habituate himself to consider, in each successive occasion of social intercourse, how that occasion may be most beneficently improved. Among the topics to which he will be anxious to awaken attention, politics will occupy a principal share.
Art | Chance | Circumstances | Degeneracy | Discovery | History | Imagination | Important | Improvement | Literature | Observation | Past | Philosophy | Practice | Superstition | Will | Discovery | Art |
Everyone knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call fourth. … Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. … Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives fare within his limits he possesses powers of various sorts he habitually fails to use.
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
Live all you can. It's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do — but live. This place makes it all come over me. I see it now. I haven't done so — and now I'm old. It's too late. It has gone past me — I've lost it. You have time. You are young. Live!
Soul |