This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"To act the part of a true friend requires more conscientious feeling than to fill with credit and complacency any other station or capacity in social life." - Sarah Ellis, fully Sarah Stickney Ellis
"No man ever knows the few joys of living without some sort of success to his credit. Of all the games worth a candle, success is first. The greatest punishment is to be despised by your neighbors, the world and members of your family." - E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe
"Every duty brings its peculiar delight, every denial its appropriate compensation, every thought its recompense, every love its elysium, every cross its crown; pay goes with performance as effect with cause. Meanness overreaches itself; vice vitiates whoever indulges it; the wicked wrong their own souls; generosity greatens; virtue exalts; charity transfigures; and holiness is the essence of angelhood. God does not require us to live on credit; he pays us what we earn as we earn it, good or evil, heaven or hell, according to our choice." - Arundell Charles St. John-Mildmay
"The world will never be in any manner of order or tranquillity until men are firmly convinced that conscience, honor and credit are all in one interest; and that without he concurrence of the former the latter are but impositions upon ourselves and others." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele
"The more a man desirous to pass at a value above his worth, and can, by dignified silence, contrast with the garrulity of trivial minds, the more will the world give him credit for the wealth he does not possess." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
"Trust not any man with thy life, credit, or estate. For it is mere folly for a man to enthrall himself to his friend, as though, occasion being offered, he should not dare to become an enemy." - William Cecil, Lord Burghley, 1st Baron Burghley, also Lord William Cecil Burleigh
"Remember, that time is money... Remember that credit is money... In short, the way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality, nothing will do. With them, everything." - Benjamin Franklin
"No man's credit is as good as his money." - E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe
"Farmers now are members of a capital-intensive industry that values good bookwork more than backwork. so several times a year almost every farmer must seek operating credit from the college fellow in the white shirt and tie - in effect, asking financial permission to work hard on his own land." - Andrew H Malcolm
"No man’s credit can fall so low but that, if he bear his shame as he should to, and profit by it as he ought to do, it is in his own power to redeem his reputation." - Lord Nottingham, Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, Lord Howard of Effingham
"Money is both the generation and corruption of purchased honor; honor is both the child and slave of potent money: the credit which honor hath lost, money hath found. When honor grew mercenary, money grew honorable. The way to be truly noble is to contemn both." - Francis Quarles
"Funerals are always occasions for pious lying. A deep vein of superstition and a sudden touch of kindness always lead people to give the departed credit for more virtues than he possessed." - I. F. Stone, fully Isidor Feinstein Stone, born Isidor Feinstein
"There is no limit to the good person can do if they don't care who gets the credit." - Judson B. Branch
"The important thing to recognize is that it takes a team, and the team ought to get credit for the wins and the losses. Successes have many fathers, failures have none." - Philip Caldwell
"As he succeeds, he takes no credit and just because he does not take it, credit never leaves him." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"The true master understands that enlightenment is not the end but the means. Realizing that virtue is her goal, she accepts the long and often arduous cultivation that is necessary to attain it. She doesn’t scheme to become a leader, but quietly shoulders whatever responsibilities fall to her. Unattached to her accomplishments, taking credit for nothing at all, she guides the whole world by guiding the individuals who come to her. she share her divine energy with her students, encouraging them, creating trials to strengthen them, scolding them to awaken them, directing the streams of their lives toward the infinite ocean of the Tao." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"A true leader does not seek followers, he wants to teach others how to be leaders. He does not want control, he wants the truth. He does not impose his leadership on others, nor does he take away anyone's autonomy. He inspires by love, not coercion. When it comes time to take credit, he makes himself invisible; but he is the first to arrive at the time of need, and he will never shrink away in fear. He is so passionate about your welfare that when you consult him for guidance, it is like coming face to face with yourself for the first time." - Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe
"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it." - Andrew Carnegie
"Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the co-operation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself." - Alexander Graham Bell
"There is no limit to what people can do, or where they can go, if they don't mind who gets the credit." - Author Unknown NULL
"Our principle, that the abstract is the unreal, moves us steadily upward. It forces us first to rejection of bare primary qualities, and it compels us in the end to credit Nature with our higher emotions. That process can cease only where Nature is quite absorbed into spirit, and at ever stage of the process we find increase in reality." - Bernard Bosanquet
"The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know, and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Reply with wit to gravity, and with gravity to wit. Make a full concession to your adversary; give him every credit for the arguments you know you can answer, and slur over those you feel you cannot. But above all, if he has the privilege of making his reply, take special care that the strongest thing you have to urge be the last." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The rulers of old set off all success to the credit of their people, attributing all failure to themselves." - Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze
"There are three degrees of filial piety. The highest is being a credit to our parents, the second is not disgracing them; the lowest is being able simply to support them." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"The responsibility for our mistakes is ours, but not the credit for our achievements. Man’s freedom is a freedom to betray God. God may love us - yes - but our response is voluntary." - Dag Hammarskjöld
"The name of virtue serves self-interest just as usefully as vices... Self-interest, though made responsible for all our crimes, often deserves the credit of our good actions." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Though indolence and timidity keep us to the path of duty, virtue often gets all the credit... Virtues lose themselves in self-interest, as rivers lose themselves in the sea." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"We credit ourselves for our successes; we blame others for our faults." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." - Harry S. Truman
"Calumny is a monstrous vice; for, where parties indulge in it, there are always two that are actively engaged in doing wrong, and one who is subject to injury. The calumniator inflicts wrong by slandering the absent; he who gives credit to the calumny before he has investigated the truth is equally implicated. The person traduced is doubly injured - first by him who propagates, and secondly by him who credits the calumny." - Herodotus NULL
"With the sharpest self-examination we can find nothing beside the moral principle of duty which could have been powerful enough to move us to this or that action and to so great a sacrifice; yet we cannot from this infer with certainty; that it was not really some secret impulse of self-love, under the false appearance of duty, that was the actual determining cause of the will. We like them to flatter ourselves by falsely taking credit for a more noble motive; whereas in fact we can never, even with the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action." - Immanuel Kant
"Beside the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was father and mother rather than all major credit cards." - Robert Orben
"It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at last fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Silence is one great art of conversation. He is not a fool who knows when to hold his tongue; and a person may gain credit for sense, eloquence, wit, who merely says nothing to lessen the opinion which others have of these qualities in themselves." - William Hazlitt
"Fine manners are like personal beauty, a letter of credit everywhere. " - Cyrus Augustus Bartol
"The world is divided into people who do things - and people who get the credit." - Dwight Whitney Morrow
"Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything." - Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
"In our time and culture, the battlefield of life is money. Instead of horses and chariots, guns and fortresses, there are banks, checkbooks, credit cards, mortgages, salaries, the tax authorities. But the inner enemies remain the same now as they were in ancient India or feudal Japan: fear, self-deception, vanity, egoism, wishful thinking, tension and violence." - Jacob Needleman
"A good education is generally considered as reflecting no small credit on its possessor; but in the majority of cases is reflects credit on the wise solicitude of his parents or guardians, rather than on himself." - James Cotter Morison, fully James Augustus Cotter Morison