This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pride is a great urge to action; but remember, the pride must be on the part of the buyer. On the part of the seller, it is vanity.
Ardis Whitman, fully Ardis Rumsey Whitman
Toscanini's eightieth birthday, someone asked his son, Walter, what his father ranked as his most important achievement. The son replied, "For him there can be no such thing. Whatever he happens to be doing at the moment is the biggest thing in his life - whether it is conducting a symphony or peeling an orange."
Achievement | Character | Father | Important | Life | Life |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Whatever satisfies souls is true; prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls, itself only finally satisfies the soul, the soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lesson but its own.
The first and worst of all frauds is the cheat one's self. All sin is easy after that.
Eugene P. Bertin, fully Eugene Peter Bertin
Honest work bears a lovely face for it is the father of pleasure and the mother of good fortune. It is the keystone of prosperity and the sire of fame. And best of all, work is relief from sorrow and the handmaiden of happiness.
Fame | Father | Fortune | Good | Mother | Pleasure | Prosperity | Sorrow | Wisdom | Work |
Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu
The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.
Age | Enough | Family | Father | Isolation | Mother | Nature | People | Security | Wisdom | World |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
In beginning the world, if you don't wish to get chafed at every turn, fold up your pride carefully, and put it under lock and key, and only let it out to air on grand occasions. It is a garment all stiff brocade outside, and all grating sackcloth on the side next to the skin. Even kings do not wear the dalmaticum except at a coronation.
Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England
As thou desirest the love of God and man, beware of pride. It is a tumor in the mind, that breaks and ruins all thine actions; a worm in thy treasury, that eats and ruins thine estate. It loves no man, and is beloved of none; it disparages another's virtues by detraction, and thine own vainglory. It is the friend of the flatterer, the mother of envy, the nurse of fury, the sin of devils, and devil of mankind. It hates superiors, scorns inferiors, and owns no equal. In short, till thou hate it, God hate thee.
Devil | Envy | Friend | Fury | God | Hate | Love | Man | Mankind | Mind | Mother | Pride | Sin | Wisdom | God |
Niels Bohr, fully Aage Niels Bohr
One of the favorite maxims of my father was the distinction between the two sorts of truths, profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.
Absurd | Contrast | Distinction | Father | Maxims | Truth | Wisdom | Truths |
Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
Idleness is the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the chief author of all mischief, one of the seven deadly sins, the cushion upon which the devil chiefly reposes, and a great cause not only of melancholy, but of many other diseases; for the mind is naturally active; and if it be not occupied about some honest business, it rushes into mischief or sinks into melancholy.
Body | Business | Cause | Devil | Idleness | Melancholy | Mind | Wisdom |
Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
Every other sin hath some pleasures annexed to it, or will admit of some excuse, but envy wants both. We should strive against it, for if indulged in it will be to us as a foretaste of hell upon earth.
God made sin possible just as he made all lying wonders possible, but he never made it a fact, never set anything in his plan to harmonize with it. Therefore it enters the world as a forbidden fact against everything that God has ordained.
Most of the troubles of humanity are imaginary and should be laughed out of court. It is folly to cross a bridge until you come to it, or to bid the Devil good-morning until you meet him - perfect folly. All is well until the stroke falls, and even then, nine times out of ten, it is not so bad as anticipated. A wise man is the confirmed optimist.
Devil | Folly | Good | Humanity | Man | Troubles | Wisdom | Wise |
Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
Know what your sin is and confess it; but do not imagine that you have approved yourself a penitent by confessing sin in the abstract.
Laughter is an integral part of life, one that we could ill afford to lose. If I were asked what single quality every human being needs more than any other, I would answer, the ability to laugh at himself. When we see our own grotesqueries, how droll our ambitions are, how comical we are in almost all respects, we automatically become more sane, less self-centered, more humble, more wholesome. To laugh at ourselves we have to stand outside ourselves - and that is an immense benefit. Our puffed-up pride and touchy self-importance vanish; a clean and sweet humility begins to take possession of us. We are on the way to growing a soul.
Ability | Humility | Laughter | Life | Life | Pride | Self | Soul | Wisdom |
Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, de jure 13th Baron Latimer and 5th Baron Willoughby de Broke
Pride, like ambition, is sometimes virtuous and sometimes vicious, according the character in which it is found, and the object to which it is directed. As a principle, it is the parent of almost every virtue and every vice - everything that pleases and displeases in mankind; and as the effects are so very different, nothing is more easy than to discover, even to ourselves, whether the pride that produces them is virtuous or vicious the first object of virtuous pride is rectitude, and the next independence.
Ambition | Character | Mankind | Nothing | Object | Pride | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Parent | Vice |
Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, composed our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride or design in their conversation.
Age | Books | Conversation | Design | Entertainment | Men | Nothing | Pride | Solitude | Wisdom | Youth |