This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Victor Borge, born Børge Rosenbaum
The Steinway people have asked me to announce that this is a Baldwin piano. (Just before starting a piece)
Lying |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
The question was whether an ape which was being used to develop a poliomyelitis serum, and for this reason punctured again and again, would ever be able to grasp the meaning of its suffering. Unanimously, the group replied that of course it would not; with its limited intelligence, it could not enter into the world of man, i.e., the only world in which the meaning of its suffering would be understandable. Then I pushed forward with the following question: ‘And what about man? Are you sure that the the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man’s world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?
Before pointing to the faults of others, examine yourselves and assure yourselves that you are free from faults. That alone gives you the right; but the wonder is that you discover faults in others only when you have faults in you.
Stealing the wealth of others, coveting another man’s wife and doubting the integrity and character of friends - these three lead to one’s destruction.
Consequences | Kill | People | Wealth | Will |
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have -- by disrupting that order -- a way of surprising.
Good | Instinct | Lying | People | Politics | Public | Temptation | Temptation |
Hung Tzu-ch'eng, also Hong Zicheng or Hóng Zìchéng, born Hong Yingming
A scholar should gather up spirit and energy in single-mindedness. If your quest for virtue is for reasons of fame and fortune, you will never amount to anything. If in scholarly endeavors you indulge in fashionable verse and stylistic flourishes, you cannot attain depth and stability of mind.
Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz
[Growing up] is especially difficult to achieve for a child whose parents do not take him seriously; that is, who do not expect proper behavior from him, do not discipline him, and finally, do not respect him enough to tell him the truth.
Action | Freedom | Responsibility | Self |
Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz
In contemporary America [mental health] has come to mean conformity to the demands of society. According to the commonsense definition, mental health is the ability to play the game of social living, and to play it well. Conversely, mental illness is the refusal to play, or the inability to play well.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
Boomer had asked her once, in a telephone call from Virginia, Why does this stuff, these hand-painted hallucinations that don’t do nothin’ but confuse the puddin’ out of a perfectly reasonable wall, why does it mean so much to you? It was a poor connection, but he could have sworn he heard her say, In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn’t creak.
No human being ever learns to live until he has awakened to the dormant powers within him
Lying |
Once annihilate the quackery of government, and the most homebred understanding might be strong enough to detect the artifices of the state juggler that would mislead him.
Better | Conduct | Consideration | Family | Father | Improvement | Justice | Justify | Life | Life | Lying | Magic | Man | Sense | Truth | Understanding | Will | Work | Worth | Vice |
Speak but one word to me over the corn, over the tender, bowed locks of the corn.
Aesthetic | Concealment | Corruption | Dreams | Indulgence | Life | Life | Lying | Nothing | Restraint | Will |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The system of life on this planet is so astoundingly complex that it was a long time before man even realized that it was a system at all and that it wasn't something that was just there.
Our concern for the loss of our friends is not always from a sense of their worth, but rather of our own need of them and that we have lost some who had a good opinion of us.
Inclination is another word with which will is frequently confounded. Thus, when the apothecary says, in Romeo and Juliet,— “My poverty, but not my will, consents; Take this and drink it off; the work is done.†the word will is plainly used as synonymous with inclination; not in the strict logical sense, as the immediate antecedent of action. It is with the same latitude that the word is used in common conversation, when we think of doing a thing which duty prescribes, against one’s own will; or when we speak of doing a thing willingly or unwillingly.
Acquaintance | Attainment | Books | Correctness | Grace | Language | Lying | Men | Merit | Purity | Reading | Style | Taste | Writing |
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest, and despair most fits. All's Well That Ends Well (Helena at II, i)
A word has its use, Or, like a man, it will soon have a grave.
Lying |