This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, fully Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
Ability | Example | Ideas | Intelligence | Mind | Time | Wisdom |
A. H. R. Fairchild, fully Arthur Henry Rolph Fairchild
The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.
Ability | Calmness | Culture | Day | Flexibility | Judgment | Life | Life | Mind | Openness | Problems | Question | Self | Sympathy | Wisdom | Flexibility |
F. Scott Fitzgerald, fully Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
The thing for which we prepare and which we earnestly expect usually comes upon us. Food is prepared to be eaten; clothing is made to be worn; munitions of war are produced to be used in warfare. Just as truly, preparations made for purposes of peace help to bring about the peaceful condition for which they are prepared.
Virginia Gildersleeve, fully Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve
The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community - these are the most vital things education must try to produce.
Ability | Education | Future | Knowledge | Past | Service | Skill | Vision | Wisdom | Think |
Great ability without discretion comes almost invariably to a tragic end.
Ability | Discretion | Wisdom |
Howard Gardner, fully Howard Earl Gardner
Young children possess the ability to cut across the customary categories; to appreciate usually undiscerned links among realms, to respond effectively in a parallel manner to events which are usually categorized differently, and to capture these original conceptions in words.
Gail Hamilton, Pseud. of Mary A. Dodge
Men as yet need some help to their imagination. There remains still room for a little illusion. It is better for men, it is better for women, that each somewhat idealize the other. Much is lost when life has lost its atmosphere, and is reduced to naked fact.
Better | Illusion | Imagination | Life | Life | Little | Men | Need | Wisdom |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the function of the imagination.
Ability | Cowardice | Imagination | Panic | Wisdom |
The shaman typically experiences ineffable joy in what he sees, an awe of the beautiful and mysterious worlds that open before him... He is a self-reliant explorer of the endless mansions of a magnificent hidden universe. Finally, he brings back his discoveries to build his knowledge and help others.
When you praise someone you call yourself his equal.
Part of our good consists in the endeavor to do sorrows away, and in the power to sustain them when the endeavor fails, to bear them nobly, and thus help others to bear them as well.