This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
It is part of human nature to think wise things and do ridiculous ones.
Human nature | Nature | Wisdom | Wise | Think |
William Enfield, aka "The Enquirer"
Socrates taught that true felicity is not to be derived from external possessions, but from wisdom, which consists in the knowledge and practice of virtue; that the cultivation of virtuous manners is necessarily attended with pleasure as well as profit; that the honest man alone is happy; and that it is absurd to attempt to separate things which are in nature so closely united as virtue and interest.
Absurd | Cultivation | Happy | Knowledge | Man | Manners | Nature | Pleasure | Possessions | Practice | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.
Human nature | Nature | Wisdom | Think |
He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in the soil with strong mixture of troubles.
Calamity | Courage | Human nature | Love | Nature | Need | Troubles | Will | Wisdom | Calamity |
Environment Pollution Panel NULL
The pervasive nature of pollution, its disregard of political boundaries including state lines, the national character of the technical, economic and political problems involved, and the recognized Federal responsibilities for administering vast public lands which can be changed by pollution, for carrying out large enterprises which can produce pollutants, for preserving and improving the nation’s natural resources, all make it mandatory that the Federal Government assume leadership and exert its influence in pollution abatement on a national scale.
Character | Government | Influence | Nature | Problems | Public | Wisdom | Government | Leadership |
Horace Fletcher, nicknamed "The Great Masticator"
The underlying cause of all weakness and unhappiness is man has always been, and still is, weak habit-of-thought.
Cause | Habit | Man | Thought | Unhappiness | Weakness | Wisdom |
As students of nature we are pantheists, as poets polytheists, as moral beings monotheists.
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.
Experiment | Nature | Wisdom |
Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and trebles that want another way. That was a true proverb of the wise man, rely upon it; "Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith."
Better | Fear | Happy | Little | Lord | Man | Money | Nature | Nothing | Wants | Will | Wisdom | Wise | Trouble |
Negative thinking is depriving people of their natural birthright of health. It is the prime cause in shortening the lives of so many of us. And yet it is so simple to live a healthier, longer and so much happier life. We have only to recognize how God works His wonders through laws governing nature and "human nature."
Cause | God | Health | Human nature | Life | Life | Nature | People | Thinking | Wisdom | God |
We all know here that the law is the most powerful of schools for the imagination. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.
Imagination | Law | Nature | Truth | Wisdom |
James Hadfield, fully Captain James Arthur Hadfield
It is one of the many paradoxes of psychology that the pursuit of happiness defeats its own purpose. We find happiness only when we do not directly seek it. An analogy will make this clear. In listening to music at a concert, we experience pleasurable feelings only so long as our attention is directed towards the music. But if in order to increase our happiness we give all our attention to our subjective feeling of happiness, it vanishes. Nature contrives to make it impossible for anyone to attain happiness by turning into himself.
Attention | Experience | Feelings | Listening | Music | Nature | Order | Psychology | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
Nelson Goodman, fully Henry Nelson Goodman
Nothing whatever can be said in support of the assumption that nature will usually follow the simpler theory... The simplest theory is to be chosen not because it is most likely to be true but because it is scientifically the most rewarding among equally likely alternatives. We aim at simplicity and hope for truth.
Hope | Nature | Nothing | Simplicity | Truth | Will | Wisdom |
Without my work in natural science I should never have known human beings as they really are. In no other activity can one come so close to direct perception and clear thought, or realize so fully the errors of the senses, the mistakes of the intellect, the weakness and greatnesses of human character.
Character | Perception | Science | Thought | Weakness | Wisdom | Work |