This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.
Louis L'Amour, fully Louis Dearborn L'Amour
No one can "get" an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process.
Ludwig Feuerbach, fully Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
God, I have said, is the fulfiller, or the reality, of the human desires for happiness, perfection, and immortality. From this it may be inferred that to deprive man of God is to tear the heart out of his breast. But I contest the premises from which religion and theology deduce the necessity and existence of God, or of immortality, which is the same thing. I maintain that desires which are fulfilled only in the imagination, or from which the existence of an imaginary being is deduced, are imaginary desires, and not the real desires of the human heart; I maintain that the limitations which the religious imagination annuls in the idea of God or immortality, are necessary determinations of the human essence, which cannot be dissociated from it, and therefore no limitations at all, except precisely in man’s imagination.
Existence | God | Heart | Imagination | Man | Necessity | Religion | Theology | God |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Whatever that which feels, which has knowledge, which wills, which has the power of growth, it is celestial and divine, and for that reason must of necessity be eternal.
The old notion that children are the private property of parents dies very slowly. In reality, no parent raises a child alone. How many of us nice middle-class folk could make it without our mortgage reduction? That's a government subsidy of families, yet we resent putting money directly into public housing. We take our deduction for dependent care yet resent putting money directly into child care. Common sense and necessity are beginning to erode old notions of the private invasion of family life, because so many families are in trouble.
Beginning | Care | Children | Common Sense | Family | Government | Money | Necessity | Parents | Property | Public | Sense | Government | Child | Old | Parent |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
The Avatar does not as a rule interfere with the working out of human destinies. He will do so only in times of grave necessity — when He deems itabsolutely necessary from His all — encompassing point of view. For a single alteration in the planned and imprinted pattern in which each line and dot is interdependent, means a shaking up and a re-linking of an unending chain of possibilities and events.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.
Praise |
Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires. It is impossible for any one who has not been constrained, by the course of his occupation and thoughts, to a habit of continual self-correction, to be aware of the amount of error in relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.
Error | Evidence | Father | Force | Habit | Judgment | Necessity | Occupation | Receive | Respect | Temptation | Respect | Temptation |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
If you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.
Praise |
The necessity of reform mustn’t be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: “Don’t criticize, since you’re not capable of carrying out a reform.” That’s ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn’t have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, “this, then, is what needs to be done.” It should be an instrument for those for who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn’t have to lay down the law for the law. It isn’t a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is.
Attention | Challenge | Circumstances | Law | Necessity | Reform |
Law is not born of nature, near the springs frequented by the first shepherds; law is born from real battles, victories, massacres, conquests which have their dates and their heroes of horror. The law is born in torched villages, ravaged lands; it is born with the notorious innocents suffering in the throes of death as the sun rises. But this does not mean that the law and the State are a kind of armistice in these wars, or the definitive sanction of victories. The law is not pacification, because under the law, war continues to rage within all the mechanisms of power even the most lawful. It is war that is the motor of institutions and of order: peace, right down to the smallest of its cogs, obscurely engages in war. In other words, we must decypher war in peace: war is the very cypher of peace. Thus we are at war with each other; a battle front runs through our entire society, continuously and permanently, and it is this battle front which places each of us in one camp or another. There is no neutral subject. We are of necessity someone's adversary.
Battle | Death | Law | Necessity | Power | Rage | Right | Suffering | War |
From the discovery of that necessity which inevitably reduces man to nothing, we have shifted to the scornful contemplation of that nothing which is existence itself. Fear in the face of the absolute limit of death turns inward in a continuous irony; man disarms it in advance, making it an object of derision by giving it an everyday, tamed form, by constantly renewing it in the spectacle of life, by scattering it throughout the vices, the difficulties, and the absurdities of all men. Death's annihilation is no longer anything because it was already everything, because life itself was only futility, vain words, a squabble of cap and bells. The head that will become a skull is already empty.
Absolute | Contemplation | Death | Discovery | Existence | Fear | Giving | Life | Life | Man | Necessity | Nothing | Object | Will | Discovery | Contemplation |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.
Discipline | Life | Life | Necessity | People |
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.
Praise |
Mozi or Mo-tze, Mocius or Mo-tzu, original name Mo Di, aka Master Mo NULL
Could it be that, supposing we follow their statements, adopt their plan, and have lavish funerals and lengthy mourning, this can really enrich the poor, multiply the few, secure those in danger, and order what is in disorder? Then this is humane (ren), right (yi), and the task of the filial son, and in planning for others, one cannot but encourage it. The humane will promote it throughout the world, establish it and make the people praise it, and never abandon it. Or could it be that, supposing we follow their statements, adopt their plan, and have lavish funerals and lengthy mourning, this can not really enrich the poor, multiply the few, secure those in danger, and order what is in disorder? Then this is not humane, not right, and not the task of the filial son, and in planning for others, one cannot but discourage it. The humane will seek to eliminate it from the world, abandon it and make people condemn it, and never perform it.
Mozi or Mo-tze, Mocius or Mo-tzu, original name Mo Di, aka Master Mo NULL
To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime, to kill ten men is to increase the guilt ten-fold, to kill a hundred men is to increase it a hundred-fold. This the rulers of the earth all recognize and yet when it comes to the greatest crime—waging war on another state—they praise it! It is clear they do not know it is wrong, for they record such deeds to be handed down to posterity; if they knew they were wrong, why should they wish to record them and have them handed down to posterity? If a man on seeing a little black were to say it is black, but on seeing a lot of black were to say it were white, it would be clear that such a man could not distinguish between black and white. Or if he were to taste a few bitter things were to pronounce them sweet, clearly he would be incapable of distinguishing between sweetness and bitterness. So those who recognize a small crime as such, but do not recognize the wickedness of the greatest crime of all—the waging of war on another state–but actually praise it—cannot distinguish between right and wrong. So as to right or wrong, the rulers of the world are in confusion.
Crime | Deeds | Distinguish | Earth | Guilt | Kill | Little | Man | Men | Praise | Right | Taste | War | Wickedness | World | Deeds | Guilty |
Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.