This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
Be not too slow in the breaking of a sinful custom; a quick, courageous resolution is better than a gradual deliberation; in such a combat he is the bravest soldier that lays about him without fear or wit. Wit pleads, fear disheartens; he that would kill Hydra had better strike off one neck than five heads: fell the tree, and the branches are soon cut off.
Better | Custom | Deliberation | Fear | Kill | Resolution | Wisdom | Wit |
Necessity of action takes away fear of the act, and makes bold resolution the favorite of fortune.
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
Amid the ruins which surround me I shall dare to say that revolutions are not what I most fear for coming generations?... It is believed by some that modern society will be always changing its aspect; for myself, I fear that it will ultimately be too invariably fixed in the same institutions, the same prejudices, the same manners, so that mankind will be stopped and circumscribed; that the mind will swing backwards and forwards forever without begetting fresh ideas; that man will waste his strength in bootless and solitary trifling, and, though in continual motion, that humanity will cease to advance.
Fear | Humanity | Ideas | Man | Mankind | Manners | Mind | Society | Strength | Waste | Will | Wisdom | Society |
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence.
Cowardice | Display | Fear | Intelligence | People | Pleasure | Thought | Wisdom | Work | Thought |
To live with fear and not be afraid is the final test of maturity.
If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles with the just fear of God and love of our fellowmen, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all eternity.
Eternity | Fear | God | Love | Principles | Time | Will | Wisdom | Work | God |