This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.
Character | Imagination | Reality | World |
Never teach false modesty. How exquisitely absurd to teach a girl that beauty is of no value, dress of no use! Beauty is of value; her whole prospects and happiness in life may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet: if she has five grains of common sense she will find this out. The great thing is to teach her their proper value.
Absurd | Beauty | Character | Common Sense | Life | Life | Modesty | Sense | Teach | Will | Beauty | Happiness |
Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan
The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad, and incomplete.
Wisdom |
In sickness the soul begins to dress herself for immortality.
Immortality | Soul |
Many people live as if life were a dress rehearsal for some later date. It isn't. In fact, no one has a guarantee that he or she will be here tomorrow. Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. When our attention is in the present moment, we push fear from our minds.
Attention | Control | Fear | Guarantee | Life | Life | People | Present | Time | Tomorrow | Will |
Sum up at night what thou hast done by day, and in the morning what thou hast to do; dress and undress thy soul; mark the decay or growth of it. If with thy watch that too be down, then wind up both. Since thou shalt be most surely judged, make thine accounts agree.
All women's dresses are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Style is the dress of thoughts.
Style |
Your life is not a dress rehearsal. Lost opportunities rarely come again.
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.
If familiarity can breed contempt, certainly Art–or what is currently taken for it–has been brought to its lowest stage of intimacy. The people have been harassed with Art in every guise, and vexed with many methods as to its endurance. They have been told how they shall love Art, and live with it. Their homes have been invaded, their walls covered with paper, their very dress taken to task–until, roused at last, bewildered and filled with the doubts and discomforts of senseless suggestion, they resent such intrustion, and cast forth the false prophets, who have brought the very name of the beautiful into disrepute, and derision upon themselves.
Art | Familiarity | Love | People | Art |
Among all the emotions, the rich have the least talent for love. It is possible to love one's dog, dress or duck-shooting hat, but a human being presents a more difficult problem. The rich might wish to experience feelings of affection, but it is almost impossible to chip away the enamel of their narcissism. They take up all the space in all the mirrors in the house. Their children, who represent the most present and therefore the most annoying claim on their attention, usually receive the brunt of their irritation.
Experience | Feelings | Love | Present | Receive | Space | Talent |
Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Regularity in the hours of rising and retiring, perseverance in exercise, adaptation of dress to the variations of climate, simple and nutritious aliment, and temperance in all things are necessary branches of the regimen of health.