This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the young should not only shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve themselves from all temptation to indulge in it.
Character | Culture | Malice | Temptation | Temptation |
Josiah Gilbert Holland, also Joshua Gilbert Holland
Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility; it is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are neighborhoods where it rages like a pest; churches are split in pieces by it, and neighbors made enemies for life. Let the young avoid or cure it while they may.
Frederick Loomis, fully Sir Frederick Oscar Warren Loomis
Moaning over what cannot be helped is a confession of futility and fear, of emotional stagnation - in fact, of selfishness and cowardice. The best way to "snap out of it" is to stop thinking about yourself, and start thinking about other people. You can lighten your own load by doing something for someone else. By the simple device of doing an outward, unselfish act today, you can make the past recede. The present and future will again take on their true challenge and perspective.
Challenge | Character | Cowardice | Fear | Future | Past | People | Present | Selfishness | Thinking | Will | Wisdom |
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.
Absolution | Psychoanalysis | Wisdom |
Gossip is always a personal confession of malice or imbecility; it is a low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are neighborhoods where it rages like a pest; churches are split in pieces by it, and neighbor made enemies for life. Let the young avoid or cure it while they may.
Research teaches a man to admit he is wrong and to be proud of the fact that he does so, rather than try with all his energy to defend an unsound plan because he is afraid that admission of error is a confession of weakness when rather it is a sign of strength.
Energy | Error | Man | Plan | Research | Strength | Weakness | Wisdom | Wrong | Afraid |
Isidore of Seville, fully Saint Isidore of Seville NULL
Confession heals, confession justifies, confession grants pardon of sin. All hope consists in confession. In confession there is a chance for mercy. Believe it firmly. Do not doubt, do not hesitate, never despair of the mercy of God. Hope and have confidence in confession.
Chance | Confidence | Despair | Hope | Mercy | Pardon | Sin |
Faith is verification by the heart; confession by the tongue; action by the limbs.
Aubrey de Vere, fully Aubrey Albericus de Vere NULL
It is easy to be honest enough not to be hanged. To be really honest means to subdue one’s prepossessions, ideals - stating things fairly, not humoring your argument - doing justice to your enemies... making confession whether you can afford it or not; refusing unmerited praise; looking painful truths in the face.
Argument | Enough | Ideals | Justice | Means | Praise | Truths |
Married love is a creative enterprise. It is not achieved by accident or instinct. Perfunctory coitus is a confession of lack of intelligence and character. There is a profound beauty and even holiness in the act of fecundation.
Accident | Beauty | Character | Instinct | Intelligence | Love | Beauty |
The power by virtue of which Christianity was able to overcome first Judaism, and then the heathenism of Greece and Rome, lies solely on its pessimism, in the confession that our state is both exceedingly wretched and sinful, while Judaism and heathenism were both optimistic.
Perhaps the quintessential symbol of society’s anomalies is the neutron bomb. The distinctive feature of this weapon is that it will expunge life but spare property. It does, however, have this virtue: it is an open autobiographical statement. It is a confession of values. It identifies the hierarchy of things society believes are worth saving: the inanimate ahead of the animate, property ahead of people.
Life | Life | People | Property | Society | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Worth | Society |
Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellectual - simply a confession of failures.
Consistency | Life | Life |