This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
Things only have the value that we give them. [Things are only worth what you make them worth.]
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. But yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, like Herillus the philosopher, who placed in it the sovereign good, and held that it was in its power to make us wise and content. That I do not believe, nor what others have said, that knowledge is the mother of all virtue, and all vice is produced by ignorance. If that is true, it is subject to a long interpretation.
Character | Despise | Enough | Evidence | Extreme | Good | Ignorance | Knowledge | Mother | Power | Stupidity | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Wise | Value | Vice |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what ever man persuades another man to believe.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge. We try all the ways that can lead us to it. When reason fails us, we use experience.. which is a weaker and less dignified means. But truth is so great a thing that we must not disdain any medium that will lead us to it.
Character | Desire | Disdain | Experience | Knowledge | Means | Reason | Truth | Will |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The recognition of virtue is not less valuable from the lips of the man who hates it, since truth forces him to acknowledge it; and though he may be unwilling to take it into his inmost soul, he at least decks himself out in its trappings.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The worth and value of a man is in his heart and his will; there lies his real honor. Valor is the strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul.
Character | Heart | Honor | Man | Soul | Strength | Valor | Valor | Will | Worth | Value |
Only when we realise that we have no self can we seek ourselves. Only through a flash of truth can one understand ignorance.
Character | Ignorance | Self | Truth | Understand |
I love a serious preacher, who speaks for my sake and not for his own; who seeks my salvation, and not his own vainglory. He best deserves to be heard who uses speech only to clothe his thoughts, and his thoughts only to promote truth and virtue.
Character | Love | Salvation | Speech | Truth | Virtue | Virtue |
Life is sufficiently miraculous already - only we do not notice it. If we catch a glimpse of its mystery, we border momentarily on new emotions and thoughts, but this comes from within, as a momentary, individual awakening of the spirit. Eckhart says that we are at fault as long as we see God in what is outside us... All the liberating inner truth and vision that we need, apart from outer truth and facts about things is... ‘native within us.’
Awakening | Character | Emotions | Fault | God | Individual | Life | Life | Mystery | Need | Spirit | Truth | Vision | God | Fault |
Until man places on tolerance and open-mindedness a value equal to the value that he places on material possessions, he will continue to be stranded on an island surrounded by his own prejudices, ideas, preconceived opinions, and knowledge that is limited by the horizon of his own ignorance.
Character | Ideas | Ignorance | Knowledge | Man | Possessions | Will | Wisdom | Value |
If you want to live more you must master the art of appreciating the little, everyday blessings in life. This is not altogether a golden world, but there are countless gleams of gold to be discovered in it if we give our minds to them.
Art | Blessings | Character | Gold | Life | Life | Little | Wisdom | World | Art |