This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Experience: The wisdom that enables us to recognize in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
Acquaintance | Experience | Folly | Wisdom | Old |
The folly of intelligent people, clear-headed and narrow-visioned, has precipitated many catastrophes.
Today. Mend a quarrel. Search out a friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in a word or deed. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forego a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate, be kind, be gentle. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Worship your God. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Still speak it again. Speak it still once again.
Beauty | Complacency | Confidence | Earth | Enemy | Envy | Friend | God | Gratitude | Heart | Little | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Malice | Pleasure | Promise | Search | Suspicion | Time | Trust | Wonder | Worship | Wrong | Youth | Beauty | Forgive | Think |
He that sympathizes in all the happiness of others, perhaps himself enjoys the safest happiness; and he that is warned by the folly of others has perhaps attained the soundest wisdom.
Those who realize their folly are not true fools.
Folly |
It is great folly to wish only to be wise.
He who lives without committing any folly is not so wise as he thinks.
No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion - it is an evil government.
Evil | Government | Kindness | Life | Life | Objectives | Suspicion | Will |
Superabundance of suspicion is a kind of political madness.
If the higher companionship which love should be does not make men and women nobler, more generous, more ready to sacrifice even their beautiful life for a lofty purpose, there is a suspicion that their love is not love but a combination of egoisms.
Life | Life | Love | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Sacrifice | Suspicion | Companionship |
The folly of one man is the fortune of another. For no man prospers so suddenlyu a by others’ errors.
Two protecting deities, indeed, like two sober friends supporting a drunkard, flank human folly and keep it within bounds. One of these deities is Punishment and the other Agreement.
Folly | Punishment | Friends |
The ultimate result of shielding people from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.