This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral, philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom being intellectual, liberality and temperance moral. For in speaking about a man’s character we do not say that he is wise or has understanding but that he is good-tempered or temperate; yet we praise the wise man also with respect to his state of mind; and of states of mind we call those which merit praise virtues.
Character | Good | Man | Merit | Mind | Praise | Respect | Understanding | Wisdom | Wise | Respect |
The activity of philosophic wisdom is admittedly the pleasantest of virtuous activities; at all events the pursuit of it is thought to offer pleasures marvelous for their purity and their enduringness, and it is to be expected that those who know ill pass their time more pleasantly than those who inquire. And the self-sufficiency that is spoken of must belong most to the contemplative activity.
Events | Purity | Self | Self-sufficiency | Thought | Time | Wisdom | Thought |
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, born Anne Spencer Morrow
The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his vanity. God-like, he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words; whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis, completely expressible in words.
Happiness itself is sufficient excuse. Beautiful things are right and true; so beautiful actions are those pleasing to the gods. Wise people have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it. The answer to the last appeal of what is right lies within a person's own breast. Trust thyself.
Intuition | People | Right | Sense | Trust | Wisdom | Wise |
Arthur Compton, fully Arthur Holly Compton
I should be inclined to claim that the person who limits his interests to the means of living without consideration of the content or meaning of his life is defeating God's great purpose when he brought into existence a creature with the intelligence and godlike powers that are found in man. It is in living wisely and fully that one's soul grows.
Consideration | Existence | God | Intelligence | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Means | Purpose | Purpose | Soul |
Reason cannot make us experience love, but it can give us intellectual assurance that love is good.
Experience | Good | Love | Reason |
Our eyes see only by permission of the mind... Truly our minds can be barriers, not because of the knowledge they acquire, but because of the intellectual habit of interpreting the unknown in terms of the known. The spiritual transcendent and the mind not only suffers defeat in trying to interpret it, but also blocks reception of the formless Real
Perhaps the simplest expression of true detachment is to say that the power of love dissolves self-centerdness and brings the wisdom to act effectively in all situations.
Detachment | Love | Power | Self | Wisdom |
The contemporary divorce between faith and reason is not the result of a contest for power or for intellectual monopoly, but of a progressive estrangement without hostility or drama, and therefore all the more deadly.
Great intellectual gifts mean an activity pre-eminently nervous in its character, and consequently a very high degree of susceptibility to pain in every form.
A person who does not know how to use his mind productively will flee from the state of being alone. But when a person has leaned to think, he will greatly appreciate the moments when he is by himself, for then he will be able to utilize those moments for intellectual and spiritual growth. In fact, moments of solitude serve as tests to a person to clarify how thinking-oriented he really is.
You can never read bad literature too little, nor good literature too much. Bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.
In the heart - pure being: “Isness alone is.” Outwardly - flow of events: “A dance, a rhythm.” Between - an evil ghost: “The impostor me,” who seems the very hub and first of things, but, scrutinized, dissolves and is not there. Pure being in the heart - be this, be still; flow of events without - cognize, accept; the evil ghost - be vigilant, expel; this is the path and all the wisdom of it.
Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature.
Judgment |
The greatest intellectual capacities are only found in connection with a vehement and passionate will.
Will |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
Lifelong part-time education is the surest way of raising the intellectual and moral level of the masses.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
There is no wisdom like frankness.
Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna af Södermöre, Count of Södermöre
Dost thou not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?