This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A country, embracing within its borders the head waters of all the streams and rivers that interlace it, when stripped of its forest covering becomes a barren waste, incapable of supporting man or beast.
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against and not with the wind. Even a head wind is better than none. No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm. Let no man wax pale, therefore, because of opposition.
Better | Man | Opposition | Wisdom |
Edmond Rostand, fully Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand
The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun has been set afire merely to ripen men's apples and head their cabbages.
The sea does not contain all the pearls, the earth does not enclose all the treasures, and the flint-stone does not enclose all the diamonds, since the head of man encloses wisdom.
The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!
Earth | Enough | Human race | Man | People | Race | Society | Wisdom |
Emanuel Swedenborg, born Emanujel Swedberg
The life of any one can by no means be changed after death; an evil life can in no wise be converted into a good life, or an infernal into an angelic life; because every spirit, from head to foot, is of the character of love, and, therefore, of his life; and to convert this life into its opposite would be to destroy the spirit utterly.
Character | Death | Destroy | Evil | Good | Life | Life | Love | Means | Spirit | Wisdom | Wise |
He who remains cheerful in spirit and sees only the good side of all things, who never allows himself to be spiritually downcast but keeps his head high and courage in his heart, he sets in motion those fine, still powers, which make every step through life The more one loves the nearer he approaches to God, for God is the spirit of infinite love.
Courage | God | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Spirit | Wisdom | God |
A corporation cannot blush. It is a body, it is true; has certainly a head - a new one every year; arms it has and very long ones, for it can reach at anything... a throat to swallow the rights of the community, and a stomach to digest them! But who ever yet discovered, in the anatomy of any corporation, either bowels or a heart?
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars, and the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, and the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest, and the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, and the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, and the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue, and a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
My austerities, fastings, and prayers, are, I know, of no value if I rely upon them for reforming me. But they have an inestimable value if they represent, as I hope they do, the yearnings of a soul striving to lay his weary head in the lap of his maker.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Why worry one’s head over a thing that is inevitable? Why die before one’s death?
Death | Inevitable | Worry |
John D. Rockefeller, fully John Davidson Rockefeller I
I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.
Dignity | Labor | Man | Opportunity | World |
All religions promise a reward… for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.
Heart | Promise | Reward | Understanding | Will |