This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Every person thinks his own intellect perfect, and his own child handsome.
It is by thought that has aroused my intellect from its slumbers, which has “given lustre to virtue, and dignity to truth,” or by those examples which have inflamed my soul with the love of goodness, and not by means of sculptured marble, that I hold communion with Shakespeare and Milton, with Johnson and Burke, with Howard and Wilberforce.
Dignity | Love | Means | Soul | Thought | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Intellect | Thought |
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.
Logic | Peace | Principles | Wisdom | Intellect |
Blosius, fully Abbot Louis de Blois and Franciscus Ludovicus Blosius NULL
For when, though love, the soul goes beyond all work of the intellect and all images of the mind, and is rapt above itself (a favor only God can bestow), utterly leaving itself, it flows into God: then is God its peace and fullness... It sinks down into the abyss of divine love, where, dead to itself, it lives in God.
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
If we persist in encouraging and educating only the intellect in our schools, we will inevitably create an instrumental conception of life, in which all human activity will be valued as a means to an end, never for itself.
W. Macneile Dixon, fully William Macneile Dixon
The astonishing thing about the human being is not so much his intellect and bodily structure, profoundly mysterious as they are. The astonishing and least comprehensible thing about him is his range of vision; his gaze into the infinite distance; his lonely passion for ideas and ideals.
The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
We pierce doors and windows to make a house; and it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends. Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.
Nothing | Usefulness |