This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The leading characteristic of the savage state is its refusal or avoidance of industry.
All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between these extremes.
The more discussion the better, if passion and personality be eschewed. Discussion, even if stormy, often winnows truth from error - a good never to be expected in an uninquiring age.
Age | Better | Discussion | Error | Good | Passion | Personality | Truth | Wisdom |
Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
Conscience is a great ledger book in which all our offenses are written and registered, and which time reveals to the sense and feeling of the offender.
Conscience | Sense | Time | Wisdom |
If the government should be taught that the highest wisdom of a state is a wise and masterly inactivity, an invaluable blessing will be conferred.
Government | Inactivity | Will | Wisdom | Wise | Government |
It has often been observed, that those who have the most time at their disposal profit by it the least. A single hour in the day, steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected accumulations of knowledge.
The most drastic and usually the most effective remedy for fear is direct action.
Into what boundless life does education admit us. Every truth gained through it expands a moment of time into illimitable being - positively enlarges our existence, and endows us with qualities which time cannot weaken or destroy.
Destroy | Education | Existence | Life | Life | Qualities | Time | Truth | Wisdom |
I extend the circle of real religion very widely. Many men fear God, and love God, and have sincere desire to serve him, whose views of religious truth are very imperfect, and in some points utterly false. But may not many such persons have a state of heart acceptable before God?
Desire | Fear | God | Heart | Love | Men | Religion | Truth | Wisdom |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
There is a time in the lives of most of us when, despondent of all joy in an earthly future, and tortured by conflicts between inclination and duty, we transfer all the passion and fervor of our troubled souls to enthusiastic yearnings for the divine love, looking to its mercy, and taking thence the only hopes that can cheer - the only strength that can sustain us.
Duty | Future | Inclination | Joy | Love | Mercy | Passion | Strength | Time | Wisdom | Yearnings |
Understand your antagonist before you answer him... Discussion, even if story, often winnows truth from error - a good never to be expected in an uninquiring age.