This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Search thine own heart. What paineth thee in others in thyself may be.
J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet
Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
Wisdom |
Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne
Experience is like a pitiless beauty. Years pass before you win her, and by the time she finally surrenders, you have both grown old and no longer need one another.
Children who have been taught, or conditioned, to listen passively most of the day to the warm verbal communication coming from the TV screen, to the deep emotional appeal of the so-called TV personality, are often unable to respond to real persons because they arouse so much less feeling than the skilled actor. Worse, they lose the ability to learn from reality because life experiences are more complicated than the ones they see on the screen, and there is no one who comes in at the end to explain it all. The “TV child”... gets discouraged when he cannot grasp the meaning of what happens to him.... If, later in life, this block of solid inertia is not removed, the emotional isolation from others that starts in front of TV may continue... This being seduced into passivity and discouraged about facing life actively on one’ sown is the real danger of TV.
Ability | Children | Danger | Day | Isolation | Life | Life | Meaning | Personality | Reality | Wisdom | Danger | Inertia | Learn |
J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet
We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.
Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch
During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.
Ability | Character | Individual | Need | Wisdom |
J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet
If you have it, you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have
Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profiteth others and ourselves.
Devil | Duty | Idleness | Labor | Sin | Temptation | Wisdom | Temptation |
To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. As a man is, so he sees.
Praise is especially destructive to children, for they readily grasp the fact that praise is based on identification with their actions. Thus, they automatically blame themselves every time they make a mistake. This is the beginning of their lack of Self-Esteem.
Beginning | Blame | Children | Esteem | Mistake | Praise | Self | Self-esteem | Time | Wisdom |
To some people a tree is something so incredibly beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes. To others it is just a green thing that stands in the way.
A complete moral philosophy would tell us how and why we should act and feel towards others in relationships of shifting and varying power asymmetry and shifting and varying intimacy.
Philosophy | Power | Wisdom |
Anthony of Sourozh, fully Archbishop Metropolitan Anthony Bloom of Sourozh NULL
People are much greater and stronger than we imagine, and when unexpected tragedy comes we see them often grow to a stature that is far beyond anything we imagined. We must remember that people are capable of greatness, of courage, but not in isolation. They need the conditions of solidly linked human unit in which everyone is prepared to bear the burden of others.
Courage | Greatness | Isolation | Need | People | Tragedy | Wisdom |
Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne
Restrictions by others chain the mind; by oneself, paralyze it.
Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England
The confirmed prejudices of the thoughtful life, are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as most must trifle away age, because they trifled away youth, others must labor on the maze of error, because they have wandered there too long to find their way.
Age | Change | Error | Labor | Life | Life | Wisdom | Youth |