This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We strive as hard to hide our hearts from ourselves as from others, and always with more success; for in deciding upon our own case we are both judge, jury, and executioner, and where sophistry cannot overcome the first, or later the second, self-love is always ready to defeat the sentence by bribing the mind.
Defeat | Love | Mind | Self | Self-love | Sophistry | Success |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
The general of a large army may be defeated, but you cannot defeat the determined mind of a peasant.
All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.
When a man argues for victory and not for truth, he is sure of just one ally, that is the devil. Not the defeat of intellect, but the acceptance of the heart is the only true object in fighting with the sword of spirit.
Acceptance | Defeat | Devil | Fighting | Heart | Man | Object | Spirit | Truth |
Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.
Creativity | Defeat | Habit | Originality |
To fight is a radical instinct; if men have nothing else to fight over they will fight over words, fancies, or women, or they will fight because they dislike each other's looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions. To know a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood. To first for a reason and in a calculating spirit is something your true warrior despises.
Instinct | Looks | Men | Nothing | Reason | Spirit | Will | Words |
The loss of certainty of truth has ended in a new, entirely unprecedented zeal for truthfulness - as though man could afford to be a liar only so long as he was certain of the unchallengable existence of truth and objective reality, which surely would survive and defeat all his lies.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has not other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Beauty | Defeat | Despise | Discipline | Evil | Joy | Life | Life | Mind | Strength | Vision |
It is defeat that turns bone to flint, and gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible, and formed those heroic natures that are now in ascendancy in the world. Do not then be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.