This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Men… measure their esteem of each other by what each has, not by what each is.
Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father’s Palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as Celestial Joys; having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the angels.
Angels | Earth | Enjoyment | Esteem | Father | Heaven | Right | World |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
To conquer with arms is to make only a temporary conquest; to conquer the world by earning its esteem is to make a permanent conquest.
Love and esteem are the first principles of friendship; it is always imperfect if either of these two are wanting.
Esteem | Principles |
The habit of judging is so nearly incurable, and its cure is such an almost interminable process, that we must concentrate ourselves for a long while on keeping it in check, and this check is to be found in kind interpretations. We must come to esteem very lightly our sharp eye for evil, on which perhaps we once prided ourselves as cleverness. We must look at our talent for analysis of character as a dreadful possibility of huge uncharitableness. We are sure to continue to say clever things, so long as we continue to indulge in this analysis; and clever things are equally sure to be sharp and acid. We must grow to something higher, and something truer, than a quickness in detecting evil.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.
Esteem |
Jacob Burckhardt, fully Carl Jacob (or Jakob) Christoph Burckhardt
Every successful wickedness is, to say the least, a scandal... The only lesson to be derived from the successful misdeeds of the strong is to hold life here and now in no higher esteem than it deserves.
Esteem | Lesson | Life | Life | Wickedness |
A man hath riches. Whence came they, and whither go they? for this is the way to form a judgment of the esteem which they and their possessor deserve. If they have been acquired by fraud or violence, if they make him proud and vain, if they minister to luxury and intemperance, if they are avariciously hoarded up and applied to no proper use, the possessor becomes odious and contemptible.
Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Pride often defeats its own end, by bringing the man who seeks esteem and reverence, into contempt.
Madame de Lambert, fully Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, Marquise de Lambert
The love of esteem is the life and soul of society; it unites us to one another : I want your approbation, you stand in need of mine. By forsaking the converse of men, we forsake the virtues necessary for society; for when one is alone, one is apt to grow negligent; the world forces you to have a guard over yourself.
The only equitable manner in my opinion, of judging the character of a man is to examine if there are personal calculations in his conduct; if there are not, we may blame his manner of judging, but we are not the less bound to esteem him.
Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren
That the individual man should seek to know himself for what he really is and should esteem himself for his true worth make inevitable his desire to be known and esteemed by others according to his merits... God alone is the judge of one’s ultimate worth, and virtue is its own reward.
Desire | Esteem | God | Individual | Inevitable | Man | Virtue | Virtue | Worth | God |
Self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.
Esteem | Reputation |
Let us, therefore, re-ascend to the good itself, which every soul desires; and in which it can alone find perfect repose. For if anyone shall become acquainted with this source of beauty he will then know what I say, and after what manner he is beautiful. Indeed, whatever is desirable is a kind of good, since to this desire tends. But they alone pursue true good, who rise to intelligible beauty, and so far only tend to good itself; as far as they lay aside the deformed vestments of matter, with which they become connected in their descent. Just as those who penetrate into the holy retreats of sacred mysteries, are first purified and then divest themselves of their garments, until someone by such a process, having dismissed everything foreign from the God, by himself alone, beholds the solitary principle of the universe, sincere, simple and pure, from which all things depend, and to whose transcendent perfections the eyes of all intelligent natures are directed, as the proper cause of being, life and intelligence. With what ardent love, with what strong desire will he who enjoys this transporting vision be inflamed while vehemently affecting to become one with this supreme beauty! For this it is ordained, that he who does not yet perceive him, yet desires him as good, but he who enjoys the vision is enraptured with his beauty, and is equally filled with admiration and delight. Hence, such a one is agitated with a salutary astonishment; is affected with the highest and truest love; derides vehement affections and inferior loves, and despises the beauty which he once approved. Such, too, is the condition of those who, on perceiving the forms of gods or daemons, no longer esteem the fairest of corporeal forms. What, then, must be the condition of that being, who beholds the beautiful itself?
Admiration | Beauty | Cause | Desire | Esteem | Good | Life | Life | Sacred | Soul | Vision | Will | Beauty |
There can be no rational administration of government when good men are held in the same esteem as bad ones.
Administration | Esteem | Good | Government | Men | Government |
Nobody has ever obtained the esteem of others by begging for it. The prerequisite for the esteem of others is self-esteem.
Esteem |