This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If I do not clasp my hand in worship to Thee, my God, then it is better that I do not have that hand. If I see with my eye an object in which I do not see You directly or indirectly, my God, then it is better that I do not have that eye. If I hear with my ear a word which, directly or indirectly, is not Your name, my God, it is better that I am not possessed of that ear. If I utter with my mouth a single word in which is not contained an entire hymn of praise to You, my God, then let that tongue cease to be. In every flicker of my mind, it is You whose flash becomes my thought, and if there is a flash in my mind that I do not know to be Your flicker, then take my mind away from me, my God, but come and dwell directly within me.
I prefer the spagyric chemical physicians, for they do not consort with loafers or go about gorgeous in satins, silks and velvets, gold rings on their fingers, silver daggers hanging at their sides and white gloves on their hands, but they tend their work at the fire patiently day and night. They do not go promenading, but seek their recreation in the laboratory, wear plain learthern dress and aprons of hide upon which to wipe their hands, thrust their fingers amongst the coals, into dirt and rubbish and not into golden rings. They are sooty and dirty like the smiths and charcoal burners, and hence make little show, make not many words and gossip with their patients, do not highly praise their own remedies, for they well know that the work must praise the master, not the master praise his work. They well know that words and chatter do not help the sick nor cure them... Therefore they let such things alone and busy themselves with working with their fires and learning the steps of alchemy. These are distillation, solution, putrefaction, extraction, calcination, reverberation, sublimination, fixation, separation, reduction, coagulation, tinction, etc.
Day | Dirty | Gold | Learning | Little | Praise | Recreation | Words | Work | Gossip |
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
Naive falsificationism takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifest and not hidden beneath disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for granted that sense experience is a better mirror of the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions. Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens.
Argument | Better | Experience | Means | Nature | Play | Praise | Reason | Science | Sense | World |
Burn to be great, Pay not thy praise to lofty things alone. The plains are everlasting as the hills, The bard cannot have two pursuits; aught else Comes on the mind with the like shock as though Two worlds had gone to war, and met in air.
God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness . It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is important to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.
Children | Courage | Enough | Firmness | Flexibility | Fortitude | Important | Mother | Necessity | Patience | Praise | Flexibility | Parent |
Long open panegyric drags at best, And praise is only praise when well address'd.
Praise |
They merit more praise who know how to suffer misery than those who temper themselves in contentment.
Pierre Abelard, aka Abailard or Abaelard or Habalaarz
O what their joy and their glory must be, Those endless Sabbaths the blessed ones see! crowns for the valiant, for weary ones rest: God shall be all, and in all ever blest. Truly Jerusalem name we that shore, vision of peace that brings hope evermore; wish and fulfillment shall severed be ne'er, nor the thing prayed for come short of the prayer. There, where no trouble distraction can bring, we the sweet anthems of Zion shall sing, while for thy grace, Lord, their voices of praise thy blessed people eternally raise. Now, in the meantime, with hearts raised on high, we for that country must yearn and must sigh, seeking Jerusalem, dear native land, through the long exile on Babylon's strand. Low before him with our praises we fall, of whom, and in whom, and through whom are all; of whom, the Father; and in whom, the Son; through whom, the Spirit, with both ever one.
Fulfillment | Glory | God | Hope | Joy | Peace | People | Praise | Vision | Trouble | God | Blessed |
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
Our soul is blessed with the impression of the glory of God whenever we praise Him.
Failure is hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever.
Money | Opportunity | Praise | Success | Wrong |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Thus our judgments, if they do not borrow from reason and philosophy a fixity and steadiness of purpose in their acts, are easily swayed and influenced by the praise or blame of others, which make us distrust our own opinions.
Blame | Distrust | Philosophy | Praise | Purpose | Purpose | Reason |
Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL
It is requisite to defend those who are unjustly accused of having acted injuriously, but to praise those who excel in a certain good.
Praise |
Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL
We give to necessity the praise of virtue.
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
And these things that keep alive on departure know that you praise them; transient, they look to us, the most transient, to be their rescue. They want us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts, into -- O endlessly -- us! Whoever, finally, we may be.