This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
Keep the middle path of strength and virtue, lest you be overwhelmed by misfortune or corrupted by pleasant fortune. All that falls short or goes too far ahead, has contempt for happiness, and gains not the reward for labor done. It rests in your own hands what shall be the nature of the fortune which you choose to form for yourself. For all fortune which seems difficult, either exercises virtue, or corrects or punishes vice.
Contempt | Fortune | Labor | Misfortune | Nature | Reward | Strength | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Misfortune |
Most of the troubles of humanity are imaginary and should be laughed out of court. It is folly to cross a bridge until you come to it, or to bid the Devil good-morning until you meet him - perfect folly. All is well until the stroke falls, and even then, nine times out of ten, it is not so bad as anticipated. A wise man is the confirmed optimist.
Devil | Folly | Good | Humanity | Man | Troubles | Wisdom | Wise |
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, 1st Baron Burghley, also Lord William Cecil Burleigh
Trust not any man with thy life, credit, or estate. For it is mere folly for a man to enthrall himself to his friend, as though, occasion being offered, he should not dare to become an enemy.
Credit | Enemy | Folly | Friend | Life | Life | Man | Trust | Wisdom |
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.
Cause | Example | Mother | Truth | Wisdom | Witness | Instruction |
Midge Decter, fully Midge Rosenthal Decter
The hatred of the youth culture for adult society is not a disinterested judgment but a terror-ridden refusal to be hooked into the... ecological chain of birthing, growing and dying. It is the demand, in other words, to remain children.
Children | Culture | Judgment | Society | Terror | Wisdom | Words | Youth | Society | Youth |
Georges Duhamel, Pen name Denis Thevenin
It is strange what a contempt men have for the joys that are offered them freely.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
Hatred of Judaism is at bottom hatred of Christianity.
Wisdom |
Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented, the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish; but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil.
Aid | Discontent | Era | Eternal | Folly | Freedom | History | Madness | People | Principles | Purity | Reverence | Truth | Tyranny | Will | Wisdom |
Altogether, national hatred is something peculiar. You always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
Familiarity may breed contempt in some areas of human behavior, but in the field of social ideas it is the touchstone of acceptability.
Behavior | Contempt | Familiarity | Ideas | Wisdom |
Ze'ev Jabotinsky, born Vladimir Jabotinsky
In propaganda the appeal of love is slow and lumbering in comparison with the appeal of hatred. hatred is the piquant sauce which accelerates both the swallowing and digestion of ideas and policies.
Ideas | Love | Wisdom | Propaganda |
Among well-bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt of others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.
Attention | Authority | Contempt | Conversation | Deference | People | Superiority | Vehemence | Wisdom |