This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury
Examples is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh.
There is no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he is willing to climb himself.
You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. The single relationship that is truly central and crucial in a life is the relationship to the self. Of all the people you will know in a lifetime, you are the only one you will never lose.
Cost | Life | Life | Need | People | Relationship | Self | Will | Wisdom |
You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be swept off your own.
Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
They believe their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know very little beyond the words.
Crime | Cruelty | Deference | Devotion | Enthusiasm | Feelings | Indignation | Little | Nothing | Oppression | People | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Words |
Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve.
James Cozzens, fully James Gould Cozzens
When you can, always advise people to do what you see they really want to do, so long as what they want isn't dangerously unlawful, stupidly unsociable or obviously impossible. Doing what they want to do, they may succeed; doing what they don't want to do, they won't.
Vanity is a strong temptation to lying; it makes people magnify their merit, over-flourish their family, and tell strange stories of their interest and acquaintance.
Acquaintance | Family | Lying | Merit | People | Temptation | Wisdom | Temptation |
Grover Cleveland, fully Stephen Grover Cleveland
Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.
Government | People | Wisdom | Government |
Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.