This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
What keeps persons down in the world, besides lack of capacity, is not a philosophical contempt of riches or honors, but thoughtlessness and improvidence, a love of sluggish torpor, and of present gratification. It is not from preferring virtue to wealth--the goods of the mind to those of fortune--that they take no thought for the morrow; but from want of forethought and stern self-command. The restless, ambitious man too often directs these qualities to an unworthy object; the contented man is generally deficient in the qualities themselves. The one is a stream that flows too often in a wrong channel, and needs to have its course altered, the other is a stagnant pool.
Noble the house was, nor seemed built for war, but rather like the work of other days, when men, in better peace than now they are, had leisure on the world around to gaze, and noted well the past times' changing ways; and fair with sculptured stories it was wrought, by lapse of time unto dim ruin brought.
It is wonderful how near conceit is to insanity!
Beauty | Gold | Indispensable | Price | Beauty |
Gracefulness is to the body what understanding is to the mind.
Fortune |
Tut! the best thing I know between France and England is the sea.
Nothing |
However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.
Everyone agrees that a secret should be kept intact, but everyone does not agree as to the nature and importance of secrecy. Too often we consult ourselves as to what we should say, what we should leave unsaid. There are few permanent secrets, and the scruple against revealing them will not last forever.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
They live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief
As love increases prudence diminishes.
A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.
People |
Those whom the world has delighted to honor have oftener been influenced in their doings by ambition and vanity than by patriotism.
Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us in consequence.
Nature seems at each man's birth to have marked out the bounds of his virtues and vices, and to have determined how good or how wicked that man shall be capable of being.
Fortune |
The moderation of people in prosperity is the effect of a smooth and composed temper, owing to the calm of their good fortune.
Fortune | Good | Moderation | People | Moderation |
Nature has concealed at the bottom of our minds talents and abilities of which we are not aware. The passions alone have the privilege of bringing them to light, and of giving us sometimes views more certain and more perfect than art could possibly produce.
Fortune |