This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"He [the flatterer] is just the person, too, who can run errands to the women’s market without drawing breath. He is the first of the guests to praise the wine; and to say, as he reclines next the host, ‘How delicate is your fare!’ and (taking up something from the table)" - Theophrastus NULL
"Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose." - Thomas Browne, fully Sir Thomas Browne
"I may therefore conclude, that the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly: for men laugh at the follies of themselves past when they come suddenly to remembrance, except they bring with them any present dishonour." - Thomas Hobbes
"How happy it is to believe, with a steadfast assurance, that our petitions are heard even while we are making them; and how delightful to meet with a proof of it in the effectual and actual grant of them." - William Cowper
"Religion! what treasure untold resides in that heavenly word! My hat and wig will soon be here, they are upon the road." - William Cowper
"It is genius that brings into being, and it is taste that preserves. Without taste genius is nought but sublime folly." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand
"Much of the glory and sublimity of truth is connected with its mystery. - To understand everything we must be as God." - Tryon Edwards
"Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world." - Tryon Edwards
"Be patient, for the world is broad and wide." - William Shakespeare
"For there is such a thing as a broken spirit." - William Godwin
"God himself has no right to be a tyrant." - William Godwin
"It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it." - William Matthews
"We must learn how to explode! Any disease is healthier than the one provoked by a hoarded rage." - Emil M. Cioran
"If we look into the history of our own nation, we shall find that the beard flourished in the Saxon heptarchy, but was very much discouraged under the Norman line. It shot out, however, from time to time, in several reigns under different shapes. The last effort it made seems to have been in Queen MaryÂ’s days, as the curious reader may find, if he pleases to peruse the figures of Cardinal Pole and Bishop Gardiner; though, at the same time, I think it may be questioned, if zeal against popery has not induced our Protestant painters to extend the beards of these two persecutors beyond their natural dimensions, in order to make them appear the more terrible." - Eustace Budgell