This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Wisdom and Goodness are twin born, one heart must hold both sister, never seen apart.
Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history.
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. My peace of mind is often troubled by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too heavily from the work of other men.
Character | Day | Earth | Fate | Knowing | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mind | Order | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Smile | Sympathy | Work | Fate | Happiness |
How majestic is naturalness. I have never met a man whom I really consider a great man who was not always natural and simple. Affection is inevitably the mark of one not sure of himself.
Madame du Deffand, Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand
Let us strive to improve ourselves, for we cannot remain stationary: one either progresses or retrogrades.
Diogenes Laërtius, aka "Diogenes the Cynic"
We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the grief of one who falls from the serene activity into the absorbing soul wasting struggle.
Character | Grief | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Soul | Struggle | Thought | Thought | Understand |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Young love-making - that gossamer web!... The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.
Antoinette Du Ligier de la Garde Deshoulières
No one is ever satisfied with his fortune or dissatisfied with his understanding.
Character | Fortune | Understanding |
It is better to give love. Hatred is a low and degrading emotion and is so poisonous that no man is strong enough to use it safely. The hatred we think we are directing against some person or thing or system has a devilish way of turning back upon us. When we seek revenge we administer slow poison to ourselves. When we administer affection it is astonishing what magical results we obtain.
Better | Character | Enough | Love | Man | Revenge | System | Think |
Life is not the creature of circumstance. Indeed, in the whole universe of everything that is, life alone, life by its very nature, is the antagonist of circumstance... If there is any one thing that is utterly clear about the nature of life, it is that it was meant to master circumstance. The spirit conquers all things when the spirit wills it, and no excuse remains when we fail to live as we wish.
Character | Life | Life | Nature | Spirit | Universe | Wills |
There is but one book for genius - nature.
There is nothing to do with men but to love them; to contemplate their virtues with admiration, their faults with pity and forbearance, and their injuries with forgiveness.
Admiration | Character | Forbearance | Forgiveness | Love | Men | Nothing | Pity |
How many a knot of mystery and misunderstanding would be untied by one word spoken in simple and confiding truth of heart! How many a solitary place would be made glad if love were there, and how many a dark dwelling would be filled with light!
Character | Circumstances | Existence | Future | Life | Life | Love | Mystery | Teach | Truth |