This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Some men mistake talking about sense, for talking sense.
The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.
Conscience | Mistake |
It is right noble to fight with wickedness and wrong; the mistake is in supposing that spiritual evil can be overcome by physical means.
Evil | Mistake | Right | Wickedness |
Marguerite Yourcenar, pseudonym for Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour
Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.
Cultivation | Mistake | Neglect |
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.
Better | Difficulty | Forgiveness | Glory | Hell | Important | Men | Mind | Mistake | People | Society | Will | Forgiveness | Society | Forgive | Think |
Technology as the knack of eliminating the world as resistance,... the technologist's worldlessness.... My mistake lay in the fact that we technologists try to live without death.
In love, no certainty is ultimate... That elementary thing - the feeling that you are loved - must be certified again and again, because one doubt,one mistake razes everything to madness and ecstasy.
The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart
It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.
Art | Care | Famous | Mistake | Music | Practice | Study | Art | Think |
It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.
If a rich man steals it is a mistake; if a poor man makes a mistake he has stolen.
The future disappeared, and my selfish motives went with it. I existed only in the present. The one thing keeping me going was being part of a group, knowing each mistake made my comrades a little weaker. Group punishment, shunned in most of American society, was a staple at OCS. Platoons fight as groups. They live or die as groups. So we were disciplined as a group.
Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas
Sometimes apparent resemblance of character will bring two men together and for a certain time unite them. But their mistake gradually becomes evident, and they are astonished to find themselves not only far apart, but even repelled, in some sort, at all their points of contact.
Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then by some means or other, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'll mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection) but still unique.
Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
Lives are snowflakes - unique in detail, forming patterns we have seen before, but as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection.)
From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering, but to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement. The pressure of occupation and the incessant stream of impressions pouring into our consciousness through all the gateways of knowledge make modern existence hazardous in many ways. Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves. The premature death of millions is primarily traceable to this cause. Even among those who exercise care, it is a common mistake to avoid imaginary, and ignore the real dangers. And what is true of an individual also applies, more or less, to a people as a whole.
Attention | Childhood | Consciousness | Contemplation | Death | Disguise | Existence | Individual | Knowledge | Means | Mistake | Occupation | People | Present | World | Contemplation | Value |
The battle is long and arduous. Let there be no mistake as to that. Go not forth to this battle without counting the cost. Ages have gone to the strengthening of the foe. Ages of conflict must be spent, ere the foe, wholly conquered, becomes the servant, the Soul’s minister to mankind.