This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
As the bosom of earth blooms again and again, having buried out of sight the dead leaves of autumn, and loosed the frosty bands of winter; so does the heart, in spite of all that melancholy poets write, feel many renewed springs and summers. It is a beautiful and a blessed world we live in, and whilst that life lasts, to lose the enjoyment of it is a sin.
Earth | Enjoyment | Life | Life | Melancholy | Sin | Wisdom | World | Blessed |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania, when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank, oh, then diet yourself well on biography - the biography of good and great men.
Diet | Good | Heart | Heaven | Life | Life | Men | Mind | Sorrow | Wisdom |
Carry religious principles into common life, and common life will lose its transitoriness. The world passes away. The things are seen as temporal. Soon business, with all its cares and anxieties, the whole “unprofitable stir and fever of the world” will be to us a thing of the past. But religion does something better than sigh and moan over the perishableness of earthly things. It finds in them the seeds of immortality.
Better | Business | Immortality | Life | Life | Past | Principles | Religion | Will | Wisdom | World |
Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.
Ability | Discipline | Experience | Knowledge | Mind | Time | Wisdom | Work |
The child's entire life is influenced by his ability to listen. Good listening habits make it possible for him to broaden his knowledge, enjoy music, conversation, storytelling, drama; discriminating listening makes it possible for him to select radio and television programs for enjoyment. Critical listening helps him function intelligently in selection of governmental leaders. It is quite possible that the ability to listen effectively may be one of the most valuable tools he can use in his efforts to bring understanding and peace to the world.
Ability | Conversation | Enjoyment | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Listening | Music | Peace | Television | Understanding | Wisdom | World |
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 |
God hides some ideal in every human soul. At some time in our life we feel a trembling, fearful longing to do some good thing. Life finds its noblest spring of excellence in this hidden impulse to do our best.
Excellence | God | Good | Impulse | Life | Life | Longing | Soul | Time | Wisdom | Excellence |
Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
If I had my life to live again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.
Character | Life | Life | Music | Nature | Poetry | Rule | Wisdom | Loss |