This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Stuart Cloete, fully Edward Fairly Stuart Graham
Happiness is a hard thing because it is achieved only by making others happy.
One of the saddest experiences which can ever come to a human being is to awaken, gray-haired and wrinkled near the close of an unproductive career, to the fact that all through the years he has been using only a small part of himself!
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
Character | Elegance | Heart | Hurry | Luxury | Means | Refinement | Study | Think |
Mutability is the a badge of infirmity. It is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike.
Character | Design | Man | Mutability |
Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith
Humanity is much more shown in our conduct towards animals, where we are irresponsible except to heaven, than towards our fellow-creatures, where we are restrained by the laws, by public opinion, and fear of retaliation.
Character | Conduct | Fear | Heaven | Humanity | Opinion | Public | Retaliation |
If I can not do great things, I can do small things in a great way.
The nobles charities, the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the world has seen, represents, more or less directly, the fruitfulness and creativeness of religion.
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
Strive to know thyself, the most difficult thing to know that can be imagined.
Humility is not a weak and timid quality; it must be carefully distinguished from a groveling spirit. There is such a thing as an honest pride and self-respect. Though we may be servants of all, we should be servile to none.
Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz
All beginnings are difficult, but there is nothing that stands in the way when you have a strong will to accomplish. The essential thing is to be sincerely resolved to be successful.
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
Henry Van Dyke, fully Henry Jackson Van Dyke
A clean and sensitive conscience, a steadfast and scrupulous integrity in small things as well as great, is the most valuable of all possessions, to a nation as to an individual.
Character | Conscience | Individual | Integrity | Possessions |
We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything.
Character | Experience | Future | Meaning | Present | Time |