This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The abilities of man must fall short on one side or the other, like too scanty a blanket when you are abed. If you pull it upon your shoulders, your feet are left bare; if you thrust it down to your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.
The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech and practically construct them into syntax.
Earth | Man | Munificence | Principles | Science | Study | Teach | Learn |
The character which Mr. Washington has attempted to act in the world is a sort of nondescribable, chameleon-colored thing called prudence. It is, in many cases, a substitute for principle, and is so nearly allied to hypocrisy that it easily slides into it. His genius for prudence furnished him in this instance with an expedient that served, as is the natural and general character of all expedients, to diminish the embarrassments of the moment and multiply them afterwards; for he authorized it to be made known to the French Government, as a confidential matter (Mr. Washington should recollect that I was a member of the Convention, and had the means of knowing what I here state), he authorized it, I say, to be announced, and that for the purpose of preventing any uneasiness to France on the score of Mr. Jay's mission to England, that the object of that mission, and of Mr. Jay's authority, was restricted to that of demanding the surrender of the western posts, and indemnification for the cargoes captured in American vessels.
Cause | Circumstances | Man | Mankind | Nature | Power | Principles | Rights | War | Will |
The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.
Art | Church | Contemplation | Devotion | Discovery | Evidence | Life | Life | Order | Power | Principles | Science | Study | System | Wisdom | Work | Discovery | Art | Contemplation |
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: 'tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.
T. E. Hulme, fully Thomas Ernest Hulme
An illusion is the false appreciation of real sensation.
Learning | People | Principles | Study | Teach |
Article 8 - The United Nations shall place no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in any capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs.
Aggression | Attainment | Conformity | Distinction | Justice | Nations | Peace | Principles | Problems | Respect | Rights | Self-determination | Suppression | Respect |
Virginia Gildersleeve, fully Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve
It was hard for an American to understand the contented acceptance by English men and women of permanent places in the lowest social rank.
Abstract | Better | Good | Policy | Principles | Rights | Work |
Uncritical reverence for the Founding Fathers was less ubiquitous while they actually lived. . . . The Reign of Terror that raged in America during the latter end of the Washington Administration, and the whole of that of Adams, is enveloped in mystery to me. That there were men in the Government hostile to the representative system, was once their toast, though it is now their overthrow, and therefore the fact is established against them.
Consolation | Esteem | Freedom | Heaven | Price |
Article 34 - The Security Council may investigate any dispute, or any situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute, in order to determine whether the continuance of the dispute or situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security.
Action | Attention | Nations | Peace | Principles | Question | Regard | Regulation | Security |
W. T. Stace, fully Walter Terence Stace
The essential character of Neo-Platonism comes out in its theory of the mystical exaltation of the subject to God. It is the extremity of subjectivism, the forcing of the individual subject to the centre of the universe, to the position of the Absolute Being. And it follows naturally upon the heels of Scepticism. In the Sceptics all faith in the power of thought and reason had finally died out. They {377} took as their watchword the utter impotence of reason to reach the truth. From this it was but a step to the position that, if we cannot attain truth by the natural means of thought, we will do so by a miracle. If ordinary consciousness will not suffice, we will pass beyond ordinary consciousness altogether. Neo-Platonism is founded upon despair, the despair of reason. It is the last frantic struggle of the Greek spirit to reach, by desperate means, by force, the point which it felt it had failed to reach by reason. It seeks to take the Absolute by storm. It feels that where sobriety has failed, the violence of spiritual intoxication may succeed. It was natural that philosophy should end here. For philosophy is founded upon reason. It is the effort to comprehend, to understand, to grasp the reality of things intellectually. Therefore it cannot admit anything higher than reason. To exalt intuition, ecstasy, or rapture, above thought--this is death to philosophy. Philosophy in making such an admission, lets out its own life-blood, which is thought. In Neo-Platonism, therefore, ancient philosophy commits suicide. This is the end. The place of philosophy is taken henceforth by religion. Christianity triumphs, and sweeps away all independent thought from its path. There is no more philosophy now till a new spirit of enquiry and wonder is breathed into man at the Renaissance and the Reformation. Then the new era begins, and gives birth to a new philosophic impulse, under the influence of which we are still living. But to reach that new era of philosophy, the human spirit had first to pass through the arid wastes of Scholasticism.
Age | Aims | Control | Effort | Faith | God | Inquiry | Invention | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Nothing | People | Pleasure | Principles | Purpose | Purpose | Revolution | Science | Spirit | Time | Universe | Vision | World | God |
My native place was [alive] with old legends, tales, traditions, customs and superstitions; so that in my early youth, even beyond the walls of my own humble roof, they met me in every direction.
Better | Confidence | Education | Esteem | Father | Heart | Imagination | Integrity | Language | Legends | Man | Memory | Mind | Mother | Peculiarity | People | Piety | Present | Rank | Receive | Spirit | Will | Youth | Youth | Blessed | Circumstance | Old |
Hearses coffins, long funeral processions, and all the dark emblems of mortality, were reflected, as it were, on the sky, from the terrible works of pestilence and famine which were going on the earth beneath it.
Blessings | Creed | God | Happy | Heart | Ignorance | Industry | Knowledge | Order | People | Principles | Progress | Religion | Right | Society | Spirit | Vengeance | Worship | Youth | Society | Youth | God |
I understand that in France, though the use of rouge be general, the use of white paint is far from being so. In England, she that uses one commonly uses both. Now, all white paints, or lotions, or whatever they may be called, are mercurial; consequently poisonous, consequently ruinous in time to the constitution. The Miss B—— above mentioned was a miserable witness of the truth, it being certain that her flesh fell from her bones before she died. Lady Coventry was hardly a less melancholy proof of it; and a London physician perhaps, were he at liberty to blab, could publish a bill of female mortality of a length that would astonish us.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
The sorrow which calls for help and comfort is not the greatest, nor does it come from the depths of the heart.
Only too often do we thoughtlessly follow a fashion which favors mass produced commodities, and only slowly do we come to realize that these also have great disadvantages.
Character | Competition | Harmony | Important | Order | Principles | Society | Society |
There is no symmetry in the market economy between the forces favoring this extraordinarily widespread modern form of sales promotion and the forces which impede it. Yet the warmest supporter of installment buying will not deny that it is in danger of excess and degeneration. As in the first case, asymmetry is due to the fact that the impulses originating in the market work to the benefit of consumer credit because the interests of those who want to sell their wares are joined by the special interests of the finance institutes making money out of installment-plan sales.
Principles | Problems | Understanding |