This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising by mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the bitterest blast of adversity.
Adversity | Dependence | Firmness | Force | Husband | Life | Life | Misfortune | Nothing | Weakness | Wisdom |
Research teaches a man to admit he is wrong and to be proud of the fact that he does so, rather than try with all his energy to defend an unsound plan because he is afraid that admission of error is a confession of weakness when rather it is a sign of strength.
Energy | Error | Man | Plan | Research | Strength | Weakness | Wisdom | Wrong | Afraid |
Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect in human weakness and in human responsibility. Without a global resolution in human consciousness nothing will change for the better and catastrophe will be unavoidable.
Better | Change | Consciousness | Global | Heart | Nothing | Power | Resolution | Responsibility | Salvation | Weakness | Will | World |
Ronald Knox, fully Ronald Arbuthnott Knox
Worldliness is not, in the last analysis, love of possessions, or the habit of courting great personages. It is simply the weakness of fibre which makes us take our standards from the society round us.
The roots of reason are embedded in feelings – feelings that have formed and accumulated and developed over a lifetime of personality-shaping. These feelings are not a source of weakness but a resource of strength. They are not there for occasional using but are inescapable. To know what we think, we must know how we feel. It is feeling that shapes belief and forms opinion.
Belief | Feelings | Opinion | Personality | Reason | Strength | Weakness |
It is reasonable to concur where Conscience does not forbid compliance; for Conformity is at least a Civic Virtue... it is a Weakness in Religion and Government where it is carried to Things of an Indifferent Nature, since... Liberty is always the Price of it.
Compliance | Conformity | Conscience | Government | Liberty | Nature | Price | Religion | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Government |
Alexis de Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
One of the most ordinary weakness of the human intellect is to seek reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.
Logic | Peace | Principles | Weakness | Intellect |
It is a curious paradox that precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity, to those mysterious powers assumed by others.
Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another; that the strength of the community is not infrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it.
Cause | Love | Paradox | Revenge | Self | Self-love | Strength | Weakness |
Men are oftener treacherous through weakness than design.
The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice.
Avarice | Benevolence | Circumstances | Power | Property | Society | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Society |
The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned into it), are the natural securities for this transmission.
Avarice | Benevolence | Circumstances | Distinction | Family | Possessions | Power | Property | Society | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Wealth | Society |