This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Much has been said of the wisdom of old age. Old age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to execute them; wise in shrinking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted.
Action | Age | Danger | Difficulty | Mankind | Old age | Power | Strength | Time | Wisdom | Wise | Old |
Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England
As thou desirest the love of God and man, beware of pride. It is a tumor in the mind, that breaks and ruins all thine actions; a worm in thy treasury, that eats and ruins thine estate. It loves no man, and is beloved of none; it disparages another's virtues by detraction, and thine own vainglory. It is the friend of the flatterer, the mother of envy, the nurse of fury, the sin of devils, and devil of mankind. It hates superiors, scorns inferiors, and owns no equal. In short, till thou hate it, God hate thee.
Devil | Envy | Friend | Fury | God | Hate | Love | Man | Mankind | Mind | Mother | Pride | Sin | Wisdom | God |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
What, after all, is heaven, but a transition from dim guesses and blind struggling with a mysterious and adverse fate to the fullness of all wisdom - from ignorance, in a word, to knowledge, but knowledge of what order?
Fate | Heaven | Ignorance | Knowledge | Order | Wisdom | Fate |
If the government should be taught that the highest wisdom of a state is a wise and masterly inactivity, an invaluable blessing will be conferred.
Government | Inactivity | Will | Wisdom | Wise | Government |
It requires as much reflection and wisdom to know what is not to be put into a sermon as what is.
Reflection | Wisdom |
Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.
Ability | Discipline | Experience | Knowledge | Mind | Time | Wisdom | Work |
Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
There is no hate without fear. Hate is crystallized fear, fear's dividend, fear objectivises. We hate what we fear and so where hate is, fear is lurking. Thus we hate what threatens our person, our liberty, our privacy, our income, popularity, vanity and our dreams and plans for ourselves. If we can isolate this element in what we hate we may learn to cease from hating.
Dreams | Fear | Hate | Liberty | Popularity | Wisdom | Learn |
Will and Wisdom are both mighty leaders. Our times worship Will.
Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
In idle wishes fools supinely stay; be there a will and wisdom finds a way.
The sure foundations of the State are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue’s sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin.
Culture | Degeneracy | Education | Experience | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Liberty | Mankind | Wisdom |
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder, and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed... To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of devoutly religious men.
Art | Awe | Beauty | Experience | Good | Knowledge | Men | Science | Sense | Wisdom | Wonder | Art | Beauty |
Ilya Ehrenburg, fully Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg
I have come to hate war not only because it kills off the flower of every nation, but because it destroys spiritual as well as material values.