This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.
Difficulty | Glory | Reputation |
Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
People | Reputation | Thinking | Think |
Escaping with your reputation is better than escaping with your property.
Better | Property | Reputation |
Reputation is sometimes as wide as the horizon, when character is but the point of a needle. Character is what one really is; reputation what others believe him to be.
Character | Reputation |
A man's character is the reality of himself. His reputation is the opinion others have formed of him. Character is in him; reputation is from other people - that is the substance, this is the shadow.
Calumny is a monstrous vice; for, where parties indulge in it, there are always two that are actively engaged in doing wrong, and one who is subject to injury. The calumniator inflicts wrong by slandering the absent; he who gives credit to the calumny before he has investigated the truth is equally implicated. The person traduced is doubly injured - first by him who propagates, and secondly by him who credits the calumny.
The laws of nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the laws of man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the laws of nature, were man as unerring in his judgments as nature.
Cause | Earth | Forbearance | Inevitable | Man | Mercy | Nature | Punishment | Race |
A reputation for good judgment, for fair dealing, for truth, and for rectitude, is itself a fortune.
Fortune | Good | Judgment | Reputation | Truth |
James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude
High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it.
Appearance | Genius | Reputation | Taste |
There are two ways of establishing your reputation - to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the former, because it will be invariably accompanied by the latter.
Men | Reputation | Will |
The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.
Conduct | Reputation |
A man is what he is, not what men say he is. His character no man can touch. His character is what he is before his God and his Judge; and only himself can damage that. His reputation is what men say he is. That can be damaged; but reputation is for time, character is for eternity.
Character | Eternity | God | Man | Men | Reputation | Time | God |
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
Character | Reputation | Think |
Silence never shows itself to so great an advantage as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them.
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism - The right to criticize. The right to hold unpopular beliefs. The right to protest. The right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us does not? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in. The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as Communists or Fascists by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what is used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.
Character | Control | Cost | Danger | Freedom of speech | Freedom | People | Principles | Protest | Reputation | Right | Rights | Speech | Thought | Words | Danger | Afraid | Guilty | Thought |
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith’. Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the ‘justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressible sweet in greater love.
Day | Faith | God | Grace | Hate | Justice | Love | Meaning | Mercy | Paradise | Righteousness | Scripture | God |
Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
He that lends an easy and credulous ear to calumny is either a man of very ill morals or has no more sense and understanding than a child.
Calumny | Man | Sense | Understanding |
Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
A superior man is ashamed of a reputation beyond his merits.
Man | Reputation |
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. The very hope of man. The thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind are all at the mercy of a new generalization.
God | Heart | Hope | Man | Mankind | Manners | Mercy | Nations | Religion | Risk | God |
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux NULL
Slander is a poison which extinguishes charity, both in the slanderer and in the person who listens to it; so that a single calumny may prove fatal to an infinite number of souls; since it kills not only those who circulate it, but also all those who do not reject it.