This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nobility of soul is more honorable than nobility of birth.
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through a long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
Chastity | Discretion | Fidelity | Instinct | Nobility | Skepticism | Surrender | Youth |
There is nothing noble about being superior to some other person. True nobility is in being superior to your previous self.
Laurence J. Peter, fully Laurence Johnston Peter
Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.
Change | Conduct | Destiny | Life | Life | Nobility | Power | Thought | Happiness | Thought |
Many a time I have made a comparison between nobility of sacrifice and happiness of rebellion to find out which one is nobler and more beautiful; but until now I have distilled only one truth out of the whole matter, and this truth is sincerity, which makes all our deeds beautiful and honorable.
Deeds | Nobility | Rebellion | Sacrifice | Sincerity | Time | Truth | Deeds | Happiness |
Sentiment and nobility and love are immortal... Tenderness and loyalty, and patience, and self-sacrifice, and devotion to duty - these are life’s natural aspirations.
Devotion | Duty | Life | Life | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Nobility | Patience | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice | Sentiment | Tenderness |
All nobility in its beginnings was somebody’s natural superiority.
Nobility | Superiority |
Stephen Covey, fully Stephen Richards Covey
Creating the unity to run an effective business or a family or a marriage requires great personal strength and courage. No amount of technical administrative skill in laboring for the masses can make up for lack of nobility of personal character in developing relationships. It is a t a very essential, one-on-one level, that we live the primary laws of love and life.
Business | Character | Courage | Family | Life | Life | Love | Marriage | Nobility | Skill | Strength | Unity | Business |
The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.
Nobility |
Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity's belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.
Belief | Confidence | Deeds | Life | Life | Nobility | Reality | Soul | Will | Deeds |
Nikolai Gogol, fully Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol or Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol
What grief is not taken away by time? What passion will survive an unequal battle with it? I knew a man in the bloom of his still youthful powers, filled with true nobility and virtue, I knew him when he was in love, tenderly, passionately, furiously, boldly, modestly, and before me, almost before my eyes, the object of his passion - tender, beautiful as an angel - was struck down by insatiable death. I never saw such terrible fits of inner suffering, such furious scorching anguish, such devouring despair as shook the unfortunate lover. I never thought a man could create such a hell for himself, in which there would be no shadow, no image, nothing in the least resembling hope
Battle | Despair | Grief | Hell | Man | Nobility | Nothing | Object | Passion | Thought | Will | Thought |
I have observed in the House of Morgan a largeness, nobility and firmness of character the like of which is very scarce indeed. I can only smile when I read the attempts to find something discreditable in the transactions of J.P. Morgan & Co. Not a hundred of such investigations will ever uncover anything which an unprejudiced judge would not consider honorable, fair, decent and in every way conforming to the high ideals and ethical standards of business. I would be willing to stake my life on it.
Character | Firmness | Ideals | Life | Life | Nobility | Smile | Will |
Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL
It cannot be said that this place of the world [is less perfect because it is] the dwelling-place of men, and animals, and vegetables that are less perfect than the inhabitants of the region of the sun and of the other stars. For although God is the center and the circumference of all the stellar regions, and although in every region inhabitants of diverse nobility of nature proceed from Him, in order that such vast regions of the skies and of the stars should not remain void, and that not only this earth be inhabited by lesser beings, still it does not seem that, according to the order of nature, there could be a more noble or more perfect nature than the intellectual nature which dwells here on this earth as in its region, even if there are in the other stars inhabitants belonging to another genus: man indeed does not desire another nature, but only the perfection of his own.
Desire | Earth | God | Man | Nature | Nobility | Order | Perfection | World | God |
Oswald Spengler, fully Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler
For the Age has itself become vulgar, and most people have no idea to what extent they are themselves tainted. The bad manners of all parliaments, the general tendency to connive at a rather shady business transaction if it promises to bring in money without work, jazz and Negro dances as the spiritual outlet in all circles of society, women painted like prostitutes, the efforts of writers to win popularity by ridiculing in their novels and plays the correctness of well-bred people, and the bad taste shown even by the nobility and old princely families in throwing off every kind of social restraint and time-honored custom: all of these go to prove that it is now the vulgar mob that gives the tone.
Age | Business | Correctness | Manners | Mob | Money | Nobility | Novels | People | Popularity | Restraint | Taste | Business | Old |