This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.
Illusion | Loneliness | Memory | Terror | Wisdom |
One ought to have a good memory when he has told a lie.
The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds.
Attention | Good | Impression | Memory | Wisdom |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in one ;unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love, that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy?
Courage | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Music | Past | Present | Resignation | Self | Sorrow | Soul | Sympathy | Tenderness | Weakness | Wisdom |
I pluck up the goodlisome herbs of sentences by pruning, eat them by reading, digest them by musing, and lay them at length in the high seat of memory by gathering them together; that so, having tasted their sweetness, I may the less perceive the bitterness of life.
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
I have ever gained the most profit, and the most pleasure also, from the books which have made me think the most: and, when the difficulties have once been overcome, these are the books which have struck the deepest root, not only in my memory and understanding, but likewise in my affections.
Books | Memory | Pleasure | Understanding | Wisdom | Think |
He that acts unjustly is the worst rebel to himself; and though now ambition’s trumpet and drum of power may drown the sound, yet conscience with one day speak loudly to him.
Do your duty, and don’t swerve from it. Do that which your conscience tells you to be right, and leave the consequences to God.
Conscience | Consequences | Duty | God | Right | Wisdom |
The only connexion or relation of objects, which can lead us beyond the immediate impression of our memory and senses, is that of cause and effect; and that because ‘tis the only one, on which we can found a just inference from one object to another.
Cause | Impression | Memory | Object | Wisdom |
Every man's memory is his private literature.
Literature | Man | Memory | Wisdom |
Every pupil you have carries in his mind or heart or conscience a bit of you. Your influence, your example, your ideas and values keep marching on - how far into the future and into what realms of our spacious universe you will never know.
Conscience | Example | Future | Heart | Ideas | Influence | Mind | Universe | Will | Wisdom |