This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Never expect to find perfection in men, in my commerce with my contemporaries I have found much human virtue. I have seen not a little public spirit; a real subordination of interest to duty; and a decent and regulated sensibility to honest fame and reputation. The age unquestionably produces daring profligates and insidious hypocrites. What then? Am I not to avail myself of whatever good is to be found in the world because of the mixture of evil that will always be in it? The smallness of the quantity in currency only heightens the value. They who raise suspicions on the good, on account of the behavior of ill men, are of the party of the latter.
Age | Behavior | Commerce | Daring | Duty | Evil | Fame | Good | Little | Men | Perfection | Public | Reputation | Sensibility | Spirit | Virtue | Virtue | Will | World | Commerce |
Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled it you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.
The motives and purposes of authors are not always so pure and high, as, in the enthusiasm of youth, we sometimes imagine. To many the trumpet of fame is nothing but a tin horn to call them home, like laborers from the field, at dinner-time, and they think themselves lucky to get the dinner.
Enthusiasm | Fame | Motives | Nothing | Time | Youth | Think |
Men should soon make up their minds to be forgotten, and look about them, or within them, for some higher motive in what they do than the approbation of men, which is fame, namely, their duty; that they should be constantly and quietly at work, each in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their fame to take care of itself.
Many actions calculated to procure fame are not conducive to ultimate happiness.
Fame |
We do not know a nation until we know its pleasures of life, just as we do not know a man until we know how he spends his leisure. It is when a man ceases to do the things he has to do, and does the things he likes to do, that the character is revealed. It is when the repressions of society and business are gone and when the goads of money and fame and ambition are lifted, and man's spirit wanders where it listeth, that we see the inner man, his real self.
Ambition | Business | Character | Fame | Leisure | Life | Life | Man | Money | Self | Society | Spirit | Ambition | Society | Business |
He that will sell his fame will also sell the public interest.
Fame is the echo of actions, resounding them to the world, save that the echo repeats only the last part; but fame relates all, and often more than all.
Mankind are so ready to bestow their admiration on the dead, because the latter do not hear it, or because it gives no pleasure to the objects of it. Even fame is the offspring of envy.
Admiration | Envy | Fame | Mankind | Pleasure |
Take pleasure in what you have and you never have to envy anyone else. The best anyone can obtain from their possessions, experiences, accomplishments, skills or fame is happiness. If you have happiness from what you do and have, no one can really gain anything more than what you already have.
Envy | Fame | Pleasure | Possessions | Happiness |
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.
Fame |
Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL
Intelligence, knowledge, freedom from doubt and delusion, forgiveness, truthfulness, control of the senses, control of the mind, happiness and distress, birth, death, fear, fearlessness, nonviolence, equanimity, satisfaction, austerity, charity, fame and infamy—all these various qualities of living beings are created by Me alone.
Sometimes in the pursuit of fame and the search for significance and the desire for that elusive excellence we all remember the slaps and forget the kisses.
Desire | Excellence | Fame | Search | Excellence |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
The time of human life is but a point, and the substance is a flux, and its perceptions dull, and the composition of the body corruptible, and the soul a whirl, and fortune inscrutable, and fame a senseless thing…. What then is there which can guide a man? One thing and only one, philosophy.