This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury
Examples is more forcible than precept. People look at my six days in the week to see what I mean on the seventh.
There is no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he is willing to climb himself.
You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. The single relationship that is truly central and crucial in a life is the relationship to the self. Of all the people you will know in a lifetime, you are the only one you will never lose.
Cost | Life | Life | Need | People | Relationship | Self | Will | Wisdom |
You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be swept off your own.
Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
They believe their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know very little beyond the words.
Crime | Cruelty | Deference | Devotion | Enthusiasm | Feelings | Indignation | Little | Nothing | Oppression | People | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Words |
Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve.
James Cozzens, fully James Gould Cozzens
When you can, always advise people to do what you see they really want to do, so long as what they want isn't dangerously unlawful, stupidly unsociable or obviously impossible. Doing what they want to do, they may succeed; doing what they don't want to do, they won't.
Vanity is a strong temptation to lying; it makes people magnify their merit, over-flourish their family, and tell strange stories of their interest and acquaintance.
Acquaintance | Family | Lying | Merit | People | Temptation | Wisdom | Temptation |
Grover Cleveland, fully Stephen Grover Cleveland
Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.
Government | People | Wisdom | Government |
Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.
John W. Daniel, fully John Warwick Daniel
Grand and manifold as were its phases, there is yet no difficulty in understanding the character of Washington. He was no Veiled Prophet. He never acted a part. Simple, natural, and unaffected, his life lies before us - a fair and open manuscript. He disdained the arts which wrap power in mystery in order to magnify it. He practiced the profound diplomacy of truthful speech - the consummate tact of direct attention. Looking ever to the All-Wise Disposer of events, he relied on that Providence which helps men by giving them high hearts and hopes to help themselves with the means which their Creator has put at their service. There was no infirmity in his conduct over which charity must fling its veil; no taint of selfishness from which purity averts her gaze; no dark recess of intrigue that must be lit up with colored panegyric; no subterranean passage to be trod in trembling, lest there be stirred the ghost of a buried crime.
Attention | Character | Charity | Conduct | Crime | Difficulty | Diplomacy | Events | Giving | Intrigue | Life | Life | Means | Men | Mystery | Order | Power | Providence | Purity | Selfishness | Service | Speech | Tact | Understanding | Wisdom | Wise |
Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, composed our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride or design in their conversation.
Age | Books | Conversation | Design | Entertainment | Men | Nothing | Pride | Solitude | Wisdom | Youth |