This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"One reason why men and women lose their heads so often is that they use them so little!... The more the mind is used the more flexible it becomes, and the more it takes upon itself new interests." - George Matthew Adams
"Intellectual and spiritual leaders hailed the cause of civil rights and gave little thought to where the civil disobedience road might end. But defiance of the law, even for the best reasons, opens a tiny hole in the dike and soon a trickle becomes a flood... And while no thinking person denies that social injustice exits, no thinking person can condone any group, for any reason, taking justice into his own hands. Once this is permitted, democracy dies; for democracy is sustained through one great premise: the premise that civil rights are balanced by civil responsibilities." - Spiro T. Agnew, fully Spiro Theodore Agnew
"I have sometimes a queer mystical feeling as regards the attitude of people in general. Just as there are physical diseases, so there are diseases of feelings. In a little town like this I feel that on some days everyone goes about hating everyone else. Then something happens and a good feeling comes back. I think the whole of mankind must be like that." - Sherwood Anderson
"Poverty does not mean the possession of little, but the non-possession of much." - Antipater NULL
"Always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are... Pass them through this little space of time comformably to nature, and end thy journey in content." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"Remember this, that very little is needed to make a happy life." - Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
"From a little spark comes a large conflagration." - Apocrypha NULL
"The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise." - Apocrypha NULL
"Better a little with devotion than much without it." - Jacob ben Asher, known as Ba'al ha-Turimas and Rabbi Yaakov ben Raash
"Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
"Words are not (except in their own little corner) facts or things: we need therefore to prise them off the world, to hold them apart from and against it, so that we can realize their inadequacies and arbitrariness, and can re-look at the world without blinkers." - J. L. Austin, fully John Langshaw Austin
"We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it." - J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet
"How then do you pour a little bit of what you feel and think and know into another’s mind?... To help children visualize, to convince them, the teachers use maps, charts, diagrams, they write words on the board, they gesture, admonish, orate. Hence the fatigue and hence the rule that good teaching is a matter of basal metabolism. Some teachers have the facts but not the phosphorescence of learning." -
"From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave... which rises, and which is opposed by the descending movement of matter.. this rising wave is consciousness... running through human generations, subdividing itself into individuals. This subdivision was vaguely indicated in it, but could not have been made clear without matter. Thus souls are continually being created, which, nevertheless, in a certain sense pre-existed. They are nothing else than the little rills into which the great river of life divides itself, flowing through the body of humanity. The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course. Consciousness is distinct from the organism it animates, although it must undergo its vicissitudes... the brain underlines at ever instant the motor indications of the state of consciousness; but the interdependence of consciousness and brain is limited to this... consciousness is essentially free." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
"Live more closely to the rhythms of nature... To keep our priorities straight, it is helpful to live more deliberately, with enough discipline to evoke and sustain a sensitivity to the inner life. To honor the rhythms and requirements of your life, be sure that the pattern you adopt is organic and flexible, rather than arbitrary and artificial... Live each day mindfully. Spiritual life requires no strongman acts, no glittering achievements or spectacular successes, but it does require passionate fidelity to the hundred little things of mundane life." - Mother Tessa Bielecki
"If you think of the infinite resources of eternity you have little cause to take pleasure in any continuation of your name." - Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
"Life is a journey, not a home; a road, not a city of habitation; and the enjoyments and blessings we have are but little inns on the roadside of life, where we may be refreshed for a moment, that we may with new strength press on to the end - to the rest that remaineth for the people of God." - Horatius Bonar
"As many suffer from too much as too little. A fat body makes a lean mind." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"The use we make of our fortune determines as to its sufficiency. A little is enough if used wisely, and too much if expended foolishly." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"The use we make of our fortune determines as to its sufficiency. A little is enough if used wisely, and too much if expended foolishly." - John Christian Bovee
"Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical disguise." - Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks
"Eminent stations make great men more great, and little ones less." - Jean de La Bruyère
"How little does a smile cost!" - Jean de La Bruyère
"How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
"Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud - and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
"Our minds are like certain vehicles, when they have little to carry they make less noise about it, but when heavily loaded they run quietly." - Elihu Burritt
"An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better." - Samuel Butler
"An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. It should be capable of shutting its doors sometimes, or it may be found a little draughty." - Samuel Butler
"Faith, you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it." - Samuel Butler
"I hold a doctrine, to which I owe not much, indeed, but all the little I ever had, namely, that with ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable." - Thomas Buxton, fully Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet
"A little experience often upsets a lot of theory." - Charles Wakefield Cadman
"A little experience upsets a lot of theory." - S. Parkes Cadman, fully Samuel Parkes Cadman
"Bereavement is a wound. It's like being very, very badly hurt... You will grieve and that is painful. And your grief will have many stages, but all of them will be healing. Little by little, you will be whole again. And you will be a stronger person. Just as a broken bone knits and becomes stronger than before, so will you." - Lynn Caine
"Upon the sacredness of property civilization depends - the right of the laborer. There is very little success where there is little laughter." - Andrew Carnegie
"An accession of wealth is a dangerous predicament for a man. At first he is stunned, if the accession be sudden; he is very humble and very grateful. Then he begins to speak a little louder; people think him more sensible, and soon he thinks himself so." - Richard Cecil
"How simply I can trust in man, and how little in God! How unreasonable is a pure act of faith in one like ourselves, if we cannot repose the same faith in God." - Richard Cecil
"As accession of wealth is a dangerous predicament for a man. At first he is stunned if the accession be sudden, and is very humble and very grateful. Then he begins to speak a little louder, people think him more sensible, and soon he think himself so." - Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury
"It is good to live and learn." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
"The chief evil of war is more evil. War is the concentration of all human crimes. Here is its distinguishing, accursed brand. Under its standard gather violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy, rapacity, and lust. If it only slew man, it would do little. It turns man into a beast of prey." - William Ellery Channing
"Little comfort can be sucked from a perhaps." - Stephen Charnock
"Death to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, out of one little dusky room of his Father’s house into another that is fair and large, light-some and glorious, and divinely entertaining." - Adam Clarke
"Method and punctuality are so little natural to man that where they exist they are commonly the effect of education or discipline." - William Benton Clulow
"The secret of happiness (and therefore of success) is to be in harmony with existence, to be always willing "to be joined to the universe without being more conscious of it than an idiot," to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore." - Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
"They believe their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know very little beyond the words." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
"Those who devote themselves to the peaceful study of nature have but little temptation to launch out upon the tempestuous sea of ambition; they will scarcely be hurried away by the more violent or cruel passions, the ordinary failings of those ardent persons who do not control their conduct; but, pure as the objects of their researches, they will feel for everything about them the same benevolence which they see nature display toward all her productions." - Georges Cuvier, fully Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier
"When the creation of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound, there is little doubt as to which is at fault." - Salvador Dalí, fully Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech