This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.
Cost | Difficulty | Energy | Enough | Labor | Little | Nothing | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Vice |
Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
Every part of this country is sacred to my people... Even the rocks that seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun of past events connected with the fate of my people, and the very dust under your feet responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch, for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
Events | Fate | Life | Life | Past | People | Sacred | Fate |
Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeks among rocks.
Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks.
Landscape: only your immediate experience of the detail can provide the soil in your soul where the beauty of the whole can grow.
Beauty | Experience | Soul | Beauty |
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.
The churches must learn humility as well as teach it.
Pride slays thanksgiving, but an humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
We are rooted to the air through our lungs and to the soil through our stomachs. We are walking trees and floating plants.
Man learns to see providence in the great universal forces of nature, in the wind and the rain, in the soil underfoot and in the cloud overhead.
Man | Nature | Providence |
A contemplation of God's works, a generous concern for the good of mankind, and the unfeigned exercise of humility - these only, denominate men great and glorious.
Contemplation | God | Good | Humility | Mankind | Men | Contemplation |
We turn virtues upside down and want to soil a clean vessel. If any honest man lives among us, we call him slow and stupid.
Man |