This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame.
It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not.
Our probity is not less at the mercy of fortune than our property.
Those who are overreached by our cunning are far from appearing to us as ridiculous as we appear to ourselves when the cunning of others has overreached us.
The art of putting well into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than true merit achieves.
Art | Esteem | Good | Reputation | Art |
Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL
The conjunction of the two, like that of the lame and the blind, is for the perception of Nature (pradhana) by the Self (purusha) and for the release of the Self. From this conjunction proceeds evolution.
Knowledge | Principles | Study |
Do we, mad as we all are after riches, hear often enough from the pulpit the spirit of those words in which Dean Swift, in his epitaph on the affluent and profligate Colonel Chartres, announces the small esteem of wealth in the eyes of God, from the fact of His thus lavishing it upon the meanest and basest of His creatures?
Contempt | Enough | Good | Principles |
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
The illness I suffer from is serious and persistent and my life may be over any day. Whenever I think about you, I become sad and depressed. In my leisure time I have written Precepts for My Daughters in seven chapters. My daughters, each of you make yourself a copy; perhaps it will be of some use and benefit to you. Do your very best once you have left home!
Birth | Day | Duty | Esteem | Labor | Play | Practice | Regard | Worship |
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
Now the wives of the husband’s elder brothers and his younger sister are equal in status; while they may be no bond of affection, they have become close relatives by duty. Now a pure and gentle, modest and obedient person will by adhering to duty be able to create a deep friendship and to extend affection to obtain their help. As a result, her excellence and beauty will be brilliantly displayed, her faults and defects will be concealed and hidden, her parent-in-law will cherish and commend her, her husband and master will laud and praise her, and her reputation will shine in town and village, its great glory extending to her father and mother… This is the root of glory or dishonor, the basis of fame or infamy. Of course you have to be circumspect!
Devotion | Esteem | Firmness | Honor | Important | Nothing | Respect | Respect |
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban
Let a woman retire late to bed, but rise early to duties; let her nor dread tasks by day or by night. Let her not refuse to perform domestic duties whether easy or difficult. That which must be done, let her finish completely, tidily, and systematically, When a woman follows such rules as these, then she may be said to be industrious.
Character | Love | Order | Principles | Purity | Woman | Gossip |
Together, we can answer this question. If you've been holding off on contributing to a presidential campaign, now's the time to jump in. We have a Democratic nominee, and he needs our support today.
Secretary of War Stanton used to get out of patience with Lincoln because he was all the time pardoning men who ought to be shot.
Effort | Men | Mob | Occupation | Organization | Past | Power | Principles | Purpose | Purpose | Success | Work |
Emily Dickinson, fully Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
I measure every Grief I meet with narrow, probing, Eyes; I wonder if It weighs like Mine, or has an Easier size. I wonder if They bore it long, or did it just begin? I could not tell the Date of Mine, it feels so old a pain. I wonder if it hurts to live, and if They have to try, and whether, could They choose between, it would not be, to die. I note that Some -- gone patient long -- At length, renew their smile. An imitation of a Light that has so little Oil. I wonder if when Years have piled, some Thousands -- on the Harm of early hurt -- if such a lapse could give them any Balm; or would they go on aching still through Centuries above, enlightened to a larger Pain by Contrast with the Love. The Grieved are many, I am told; the reason deeper lies, -- Death is but one and comes but once, and only nails the eyes. There's Grief of Want and Grief of Cold, -- a sort they call Despair; there's Banishment from native Eyes, in sight of Native Air. And though I may not guess the kind correctly, yet to me a piercing Comfort it affords in passing Calvary, to note the fashions of the Cross, and how they're mostly worn, still fascinated to presume that Some are like My Own.
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
He'll never let his friends be at ease, and he'll never be at ease himself!
Esteem | Hate | Impertinence | Love |
For we may ask in return, what has any secret purpose to do with our role of judgment and action? “Secret things,” we are told, “belong unto the Lord our God; but things which are revealed, unto us and to our children.” The question taken from the hidden purposes of the divine mind, can have no force whatever, because it is an appeal to our ignorance. We know, and can know nothing about them. One thing, however, we do know. God must be always and everywhere consistent with himself; and whether we can understand it or not, it is certain that there can be no inconsistency between revealed and unrevealed truths; and if God has made an offer of eternal life through the atonement unto all men, and commanded all men to embrace it, there cannot be in any purpose of God concerning its nature, anything which will clash with, and so contradict this universal offer.
Circumstances | Earth | God | Light | Means | Mistake | Nature | Necessity | Principles | System | Waste | Will | God | Guilty |
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
Every time our intellect thus succeeds in substituting some principles and causes of knowledge for knowledge itself, it is on the right road to wisdom. As a matter of fact, it has already found wisdom, at least in part, while awaiting the day when, fully aware of what the absolutely first principles and first causes truly are, it begins to see everything else in their light.
Man | Principles | Rest | Wise |
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
He (a new philosopher) still needs to be taught, not this time philosophy, but to philosophize.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
The rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million.