This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"Remember: Marriage is the number one cause of divorce." - Red Skelton, fully Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton
"The media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues. Poverty is a moral issue, it's a faith issue, its a religious issue." - Jim Wallis
"If we must lose wife or husband when we live to our highest right, we lose an unhappy marriage as well, and we gain ourselves. But if a marriage is born between two already self-discovered, what a lovely adventure begins, hurricanes and all." - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
"Perhaps the greatest blessing in marriage is that it lasts so long. The years, like the varying interests of each year, combine to buttress and enrich each other. Out of many shared years, one life. In a series of temporary relationships, one misses the ripening, gathering, harvesting joys, the deep, hard-won truths of marriage." - Richard Clarke Cabot
"All things need watching, working at, caring for and marriage is no exception. Marriage is not something to be treated indifferently, or abused or something that simply takes care of itself. Nothing neglected will remain as it was or is, or will fail to deteriorate. All things need attention care and concern and especially so in this most sensitive of all relationships of life." - Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans
"Marriage requires the giving and keeping of confidences, the sharing of thoughts and feelings, respect and understanding always, marriage requires humility - the humility to repent, the humility to forgive. Marriage requires flexibility (to give and take) and firmness: not to compromise principles. And a wise and moderate sense of humor. Both need to be pulling together in the same direction." - Richard L. Evans, fully Richard Louis Evans
"Friendship is a union of spirits, a marriage of hearts, and the bond there of virtue." - Robertson Davies
"I am constantly astonished by the people, otherwise intelligent, who think that anything so complex and delicate as a marriage can be left to take care of itself. One sees them fussing about all sorts of lesser concerns, apparently unaware that side by side with them " - Robertson Davies
"I think a great many marriages would be saved if people would behave toward one another with the same courtesy that they would extend to someone whom they really didn't know as well as a marriage necessarily implies. ... It's not very easy to do, but it is surely easier to do than to haggle and nag and fight and bitch and yelp at one another as you hear a lot of married people doing ... They seem to feel that the familiarity of affection permits anything, including insult." - Robertson Davies
"If people need a book to tell them that in marriage kindness and forbearance are necessary, and that the sexual act is happier when it is undertaken to give pleasure as well as to receive it, these books are what they want. Possibly people so lacking in understanding of themselves and others do not mind being addressed in the coarse, grainy prose of the marriage counselor." - Robertson Davies
"Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years." - Robert Oxton Bolt
"Like a bridegroom the sun Dons his robe that is spun Of light, Which from Thee emanated Yet in no wise abated Thy light. Taught to go westward round With obeisance profound To his Lord, He by service so loyal To a master so royal Is a lord. While his homage each day Serves to mark and display Thy glory, ’Tis Thy hand that investeth The robe on which resteth His glory." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinion of others." - Henry Taylor, fully Sir Henry Taylor
"A fool and her money are soon courted." - Helen Rowland
"After marriage, a woman's sight becomes so keen that she can see right through her husband without looking at him, and a man's so dull that he can look right through his wife without seeing her." - Helen Rowland
"Love, like a chicken salad or restaurant hash, must be taken with blind faith or it loses its flavor." - Helen Rowland
"I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad director." - Bette Davis, Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis
"Nobody ever left the presidency with less regret, less disappointment, fewer heart burnings, or any general content with the result of his term (in his own heart, I mean) than I do. Full of difficulty and trouble at first, I now find myself on smooth waters and under bright skies." - Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes
"Every day, a framed poster of a mountain climber given to me by my daughter Trudy reminds me to ‘climb with care and confidence.’ I wholeheartedly believe in this philosophy, which is why in all my years in the restaurant business, I have never tried to overextend. I’m satisfied stepping from one plateau to the next, making sure we’re doing everything right before moving on. That way of thinking has allowed us to grow steadily into a 1.5 billion-dollar business with more than 1,200 restaurants, while responding to the needs of people around us. I know the best way to grow our business is to climb with care and confidence." - S. Truett Cathy
"We admire virtue in a woman as long as it doesn't get in our way." - Sacha Guitry, fully Alexandre-Pierre Georges "Sacha" Guitry
"Faith is the proper and adequate means of union with God. #6. Contemplation, by which the intellect has a higher knowledge of God, is called mystical theology, meaning the secret wisdom of God. St. Dionysius calls contemplation a ray of darkness." - Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL
"Not only do we have to accept that God wounds us, but we have to accept to be wounded where He desires; we have to let God choose, because it is His right." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL
"A world to be born under your footsteps…" - Saint-John Perse, first Saint-Leger Leger, pseudonyms of Alexis Leger
"A man’s style in any art should be like his dress — it should attract as little attention as possible." - Samuel Butler
"Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Love before marriage is absolutely necessary." - Samuel Richardson
"Love gratified is love satisfied, and love satisfied is indifference begun." - Samuel Richardson
"Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence." - Simone Weil
"The day had been spent in the expectation of these hours, and now they were crumbling away, becoming, in their turn, another period of expectancy...It was a journey without end, leading to an indefinite future, eternally shifting just as she was reaching the present." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"Her prayer was continual though she was habitually plunged in aridity. One day a novice entered her cell paused, struck by the celestial expression of her countenance. She was sewing with alacrity yet seemed lost in profound contemplation." - Thérèse de Lisieux, fully Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. born Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin NULL
"The difference between a cow and a bean is a bean can begin an adventure." - Stephen Sondheim, fully Stephen Joshua Sondheim
"The only philosophy that can be practiced responsibly in the face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption: all else is reconstruction, mere technique. Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, that reveal its fissures and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will one day appear in the Messianic light." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
"Violent excess is sure to provoke violent reaction; and the worst possible policy for our country would be one of violent oscillation between reckless upsetting of property rights, and unscrupulous greed manifested under pretense of protecting those rights. The agitator who preaches hatred and practices slander and untruthfulness, and the visionary who promises perfection and accomplishes only destruction, are the worst enemies of reform; and the man of great wealth who accumulates and uses his wealth without regard to ethical standards, who pro?ts by and breeds corruption, and robs and swindles others, is the very worst enemy of property, the very worst enemy of conservatism, the very worst enemy of those business interests that only too often regard him with mean admiration and heatedly endeavor to shield him from the consequences of his iniquity." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"What is the use of beauty in woman? Provided a woman is physically well made and capable of bearing children, she will always be good enough in the opinion of economists. What is the use of music? -- of painting? Who would be fool enough nowadays to prefer Mozart to Carrel, Michael Angelo to the inventor of white mustard? There is nothing really beautiful save what is of no possible use. Everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and man's needs are low and disgusting, like his own poor, wretched nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet. For my part, saving these gentry's presence, I am of those to whom superfluities are necessaries, and I am fond of things and people in inverse ratio to the service they render me. I prefer a Chinese vase with its mandarins and dragons, which is perfectly useless to me, to a utensil which I do use, and the particular talent of mine which I set most store by is that which enables me not to guess logogriphs and charades. I would very willingly renounce my rights as a Frenchman and a citizen for the sight of an undoubted painting by Raphael, or of a beautiful nude woman, -- Princess Borghese, for instance, when she posed for Canova, or Julia Grisi when she is entering her bath. I would most willingly consent to the return of that cannibal, Charles X., if he brought me, from his residence in Bohemia, a case of Tokai or Johannisberg; and the electoral laws would be quite liberal enough, to my mind, were some of our streets broader and some other things less broad. Though I am not a dilettante, I prefer the sound of a poor fiddle and tambourines to that of the Speaker's bell. I would sell my breeches for a ring, and my bread for jam. The occupation which best befits civilized man seems to me to be idleness or analytically smoking a pipe or cigar. I think highly of those who play skittles, and also of those who write verse. You may perceive that my principles are not utilitarian, and that I shall never be the editor of a virtuous paper, unless I am converted, which would be very comical." - Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo
"It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs." - Thomas Hardy
"It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a chance of using it." - Thomas Hardy
"How sweetly she looks! O, but there's a wrinkle in her brow as deep as philosophy. - Anacreon, drink to my mistress' health, I'll pledge it. Stay, stay, there's a spider in the cup! No, 'tis but a grape-stone; swallow it, fear nothing, poet. So, so; lift higher." - Thomas Middleton
"The babbling sounds that mimic echo plays, The fairy shade, and its eternal maze? Nature and Art in all their charms combin'd, And all Elysium to one view confin'd! " - Thomas Tickell
"Since all the riches of this world May be gifts from the Devil and earthly kings, I should suspect that I worshipp’d the Devil If I thank’d my God for worldly things." - William Blake
"Love to faults is always blind; Always is to joy inclin’d, Lawless, wing’d and unconfin’d, And breaks all chains from every mind. Deceit to secrecy confin’d, Lawful, cautious and refin’d; To anything but interest blind, And forges fetters for the mind." - William Blake
"Anxiety is not fear, being afraid of this or that definite object, but the uncanny feeling of being afraid of nothing at all. It is precisely Nothingness that makes itself present and felt as the object of our dread." - William Barrett, fully William Christopher Barrett
"But to go to school in a summer morn, Oh, it drives all joy away! Under a cruel eye outworn, the little ones spend the day-- in sighing and dismay." - William Blake
"I was in a printing-house in hell, and saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation." - William Blake