This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
At this Adonis smiles as in disdain, that in each cheek appears a pretty dimple. Love made those hollows, if himself were slain, he might be buried in a tomb so simple; foreknowing well, if there he came to lie, why, there Love lived, and there he could not die. Venus and Adonis
Can you not see? Or will ye not observe the strangeness of his altered countenance? With what a majesty he bears himself, how insolent of late he is become, how proud, how peremptory, and unlike himself? We know the time since he was mild and affable, and if we did but glance a far-off look, immediately he was upon his knee, that all the court admired him for submission; but meet him now and, be it in the morn, when everyone will give the time of day, he knits his brow and shows an angry eye and passeth by with stiff unbowèd knee, disdaining duty that to us belongs. Small curs are not regarded when they grin, but great men tremble when the lion roars, and Humphrey is no little man in England. First note that he is near you in descent, and should you fall, he is the next will mount. Me seemeth then it is no policy, respecting what a rancorous mind he bears and his advantage following your decease, that he should come about your royal person or be admitted to your highness' council. By flattery hath he won the commons' heart; and when he please to make commotion, 'tis to be feared they all will follow him. Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted. Suffer them now, and they'll o'ergrow the garden and choke the herbs for want of husbandry. The reverent care I bear unto my lord made me collect these dangers in the duke. If it be fond, call it a woman's fear; which fear if better reasons can supplant, I will subscribe and say I wronged the duke. My lord of Suffolk, Buckingham, and York, reprove my allegation if you can, or else conclude my words effectual. Henvry VI, Part II, Act iii, Scene 1
In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.
Experience | Mind | Order | Present |
Of all creatures in this visible world, light is the most glorious; of all light, the light of the sun without compare excels the rest.
I personally gave up the Absolute . . . I fully believe in taking moral holidays.
Order | Philosophy | Psychology |
When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. ... His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast...
Care | Decision | Order | Responsibility |
Weak and imperfect men shall, notwithstanding their frailties and effects, be received as having pleased God, if they have done their utmost to please Him.
Order |
Next to reading, meditation, and prayer, there is nothing that so secures our hearts from foolish passions, nothing that preserves so holy and wise a frame of mind, as some useful, humble employment of ourselves.
The necessity of faith as an ingredient in our mental attitude is strongly insisted on by the scientific philosophers of the present day; but by a singularly arbitrary caprice they say that it is only legitimate when used in the interests of one particular proposition, — the proposition, namely, that the course of nature is uniform. That nature will follow to-morrow the same laws that she follows to-day is, they all admit, a truth which no man can know; but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it.
When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
Mind | Nature | Order | Religion | Sacrifice | Surrender | Happiness |
The progress of these terrors is plainly shown us in our Lord's agony in the garden, when the reality of this eternal death so broke in upon Him, so awakened and stirred itself in Him, as to force great drops of blood to sweat from His body... His agony was His entrance into the last, eternal terrors of the lost soul, into the real horrors of that dreadful, eternal death which man unredeemed must have died into when he left this world. We are therefore not to consider our Lord's death upon the Cross as only the death of that mortal body which was nailed to it, but we are to look upon Him with wounded hearts, as being fixed and fastened in the state of that twofold death, which was due to the fallen nature, out of which He could not come till He could say, It is finished; Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit..
Eternal | God | Law | Love | Order | Rule | Self-love | Will | God |
Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.
A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run than a great amount of wit without it.
We do not regret the loss of our friends by reasons of their merit, but because of our needs and for the good opinion that we believed them to have held of us.
We confess our little faults to persuade ourselves we have no great ones.