This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is in seeing the actions of vicious and wicked people and comparing them with what my conscience tells me regarding such actions that I have learnt what I ought to avoid and what I ought to do. The wise and prudent man will draw a useful lesson even from poison itself.
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
A wise prince will seek means by which his subjects will always and in every possible condition of things have need of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him.
Government | Means | Need | Will | Wise |
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
There is no other way of guarding one’s self against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect. A prudent prince must therefore take a third course, by choosing for his council wise men, and giving these alone full liberty to speak the truth to him, but only of those things that he asks and of nothing else; but he must ask them about everything and hear their opinion, and afterwards deliberate by himself in his own way.
Flattery | Giving | Liberty | Men | Nothing | Opinion | Respect | Self | Truth | Will | Wise | Understand |
There are seven marks of a wise man. The wise man does not speak before him who is greater than he in wisdom; and does not break in upon the speech of his fellow; he is not hasty to answer; he questions according to the subject matter; and answers to the point; he speaks upon the first thing first, and the last; regarding that which he has not understood he says, I do not understand it, and he acknowledges the truth.
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
It is an infallible rule that a prince who is not wise himself cannot be well-advised.
With your money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too.
Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL
When hungry I eat; when tired, I sleep. Fools laugh at me. The wise understand.
Wise |
With money in your pocket, you are wise and handsome, and you sing well too.
Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL
Prosperity does not exalt the wise man, nor does adversity cast him down.
Adversity | Man | Prosperity | Wise |
Why must man meet this lovely day with solemn face and anxious knee? All the earth quivers in the ray of the kind sun, and only he walks down-eyed. More wise than we is every bud and bloom and pod. These hold Creations’ secret key - “Be still, and know that I am God.”
Know thou the soul as riding in a chariot, the body as the chariot. Know thou the intellect as the chariot-driver, and the mind as the reins. The senses, they say, are the horses; the objects of sense, what they range over, the self combined with senses and mind, wise men call `the enjoyer.’ He who has not understanding, whose mind is not constantly held firm – his senses are uncontrolled, like the vicious horses of a chariot-driver.
Body | Men | Mind | Self | Sense | Soul | Understanding | Wise | Intellect |
Mundaka Upanishad, or or the Mundakopanishad
As rivers flow into the sea and in so doing lose name and form, even so the wise man, freed from name and form, attains the Supreme Being, the Self-luminous, the Infinite.