This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The word "miser," so often used as expressive of one who is grossly covetous and saving, in its origin signifies one that is miserable, the very etymology of the word thus indicating the necessary unhappiness of the miser spirit." - Tryon Edwards
"It is not a shame not to know, it is a shame not to ask." - Turkish Proverbs
"Oh! Who art thou so fast proceeding, Ne'er glancing back thine eyes of flame? Mark'd but by few, through earth I'm speeding, And Opportunity's my name. What form is that which scowls beside thee? Repentance is the form you see: Learn then, the fate may yet betide thee. She seizes them who seize not me." - Thomas Love Peacock
"The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity." - Thomas Love Peacock
"The histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher classes." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
"The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
"Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson
"A great nation is not led by a man who simply repeats the talk of the street-corners or the opinions of the newspapers. A nation is led by a man who hears more than those things; or who, rather, hearing those things, understands them better, unites them, puts them into a common meaning; speaks, not the rumors of the street, but a new principle for a new age; a man in whose ears the voices of the nation do not sound like the accidental and discordant notes that come from the voice of a mob, but concurrent and concordant like the united voices of a chorus, whose many meanings, spoken by melodious tongues, unite in his understanding in a single meaning and reveal to him a single vision, so that he can speak what no man else knows, the common meaning of the common voice. Such is the man who leads a great, free, democratic nation." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"Princeton is no longer a thing for Princeton men to please themselves with. Princeton is a thing with which Princeton men must satisfy the country." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbors, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition." - Thucydides NULL
"The freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation." - Thucydides NULL
"Their swaying bodies reflected the agitation of their minds, and they suffered the worst agony of all, ever just within the reach of safety or just on the point of destruction." - Thucydides NULL
"If today I had a young mind to direct, to start on the journey of life, and I was faced with the duty of choosing between the natural way of my forefathers and that of the...present way of civilization, I would, for its welfare, unhesitatingly set that child's feet in the path of my forefathers. I would raise him to be an Indian!" - Tom Brown, Jr.
"Protest politics has been vibrant against Bush and the war in Iraq, but it's been intergenerational. This doesn't seem to be a resurgence of student activism." - Tom Hayden, fully Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden
"You are your greatest asset. Put your time, effort and money into training, grooming, and encouraging your greatest asset." - Tom Hopkins
"If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
"And if he dies, take him and cut him into little stars and he will make the face of heaven so fine that everyone will fall in love with night." - William Shakespeare
"And you all know security is mortals' chiefest enemy." - William Shakespeare
"Blind is his love and best befits the dark. Romeo and Juliet, Act ii, Scene 1" - William Shakespeare
"But as th' unthought-on accident is guilty To what we wildly do, so we profess Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies Of every wind that blows." - William Shakespeare
"But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid art far more fair than she. Be not her maid, since she is envious. Her vestal livery is but sick and green, and none but fools do wear it. Cast it off. It is my lady; O, it is my love! O that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eye discourses; I will answer it. I am too bold; 'tis not to me she speaks. Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, having some business, do entreat her eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing and think it were not night. See how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek! Romeo and Juliet, Act ii, Scene 2" - William Shakespeare
"But whate'er I am, nor I nor any man that but man is, with nothing shall be pleased 'til he be eased with being nothing. Richard II, Act v, Scene 5" - William Shakespeare
"But, O thou tyrant, Do not repent these things, for they are heavier Than all thy woes can stir. Therefore betake thee To nothing but despair. The Winter's Tale (Paulina at III, ii)" - William Shakespeare
"Chain me with roaring bears; or shut me nightly in a charnel-house, o'er-covered quite with dead men's rattling bones, with reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; or bid me go into a new-made grave, and hide me with a dead man in his shroud; things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble; and I will do it without Fear or Doubt, to live an unstain'd Wife of my sweet Love. Romeo and Juliet, Act iv, Scene 1" - William Shakespeare
"Do not borrow, do not lend, because both lent money would already friends, both of them will be lost. Moreover borrowing dulls the sense of prudence. Measure for Measure, Act v, Scene 1" - William Shakespeare
"Do not for ever with thy vailed lids Seek for thy noble father in the dust. Thou know'st 'tis common. All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity. Hamlet, Act i, Scene 2" - William Shakespeare
"Every man has a certain sphere of discretion, which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbors. This right flows from the very nature of man. First, all men are fallible: no man can be justified in setting up his judgment as a standard for others. We have no infallible judge of controversies; each man in his own apprehension is right in his decisions; and we can find no satisfactory mode of adjusting their jarring pretensions. If everyone be desirous of imposing his sense upon others, it will at last come to be a controversy, not of reason, but of force. Secondly, even if we had an in fallible criterion, nothing would be gained, unless it were by all men recognized as such. If I were secured against the possibility of mistake, mischief and not good would accrue, from imposing my infallible truths upon my neighbor, and requiring his submission independently of any conviction I could produce in his understanding. Man is a being who can never be an object of just approbation, any further than he is independent. He must consult his own reason, draw his own conclusions and conscientiously conform himself to his ideas of propriety. Without this, he will be neither active, nor considerate, nor resolute, nor generous." - William Godwin
"For there is such a thing as a broken spirit." - William Godwin
"It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness." - William Godwin
"Obey this may be right but beware of reverence. Government is nothing but regulated force force is its appropriate claim upon your attention. It is the business of individuals to persuade the tendency of concentrated strength, is only to give consistency and permanence to an influence more compendious than persuasion." - William Godwin
"The cause of justice is the cause of humanity. Its advocates should overflow with universal good will. We should love this cause, for it conduces to the general happiness of mankind." - William Godwin
"The execution of anything considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation." - William Godwin
"The other reference is to the time to come; wherein though he have never so great hope of bettering himself, yet for the present he remaineth content with his present condition." - William Gouge
"Power is, therefore, a word which we may use both in an active and in a passive signification; and in psychology we may apply it both to the active faculty and to the passive capacity of the mind." - William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
"The conqueror is regarded with awe the wise man commands our respect but it is only the benevolent man that wins our affection" - William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
"But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer; and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion." - William James
"Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitativeness. We become conscious of what we ourselves are by imitating others." - William James
"How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young, -- or slender!" - William James
"In business for yourself, not by yourself." - William James
"Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do." - William James
"Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another." - William James
"The essence of genius is to know what to overlook." - William James
"The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in." - William James
"We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not so." - William James
"If our common life is not a common course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians." - William Law
"Piety requires us to renounce no ways of life where we can act reasonably, and offers what we do to the glory of God." - William Law