This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Instead of developing the child’s own faculties of discernment, and teaching it to judge and think for itself, the teacher uses all his energies to stuff its head full of the ready-made thoughts of other people.
Discernment | People | Teacher | Think |
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
Heart | Punishment | World |
He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.
When young, we trust ourselves too much and we trust others too little when old. Rashness is the error of youth, timid caution of age. Manhood is the isthmus between the two extremes; the ripe and fertile season of action, when alone we can hope to find the head to contrive, united with the hand to execute.
Action | Age | Caution | Error | Hope | Little | Rashness | Trust | Youth |
The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.
The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.
Enemy | Future | Hope | Inspiration | Man | Optimism | Present |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.
Day | Eternity | Instinct | Time | Will | Wise | Intellect | Think |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above a ground.
The head learns new things, but the heart forever more practices old experiences.
When young, we trust ourselves too much and we trust others too little when old. Rashness is the error of youth, timid caution of age. Manhood is the isthmus between the two extremes; the ripe and fertile season of action, when alone we can hope to find the head to contrive, united with the hand to execute.
Action | Age | Caution | Error | Hope | Little | Rashness | Trust | Youth |
The real advantage which truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favorable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such a head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
Circumstances | Opinion | Time | Truth | Will |
We should always keep a corner of our heads open and free, that we may make room for the opinions of our friends. Let us have heart and head hospitality.
Heart | Hospitality |
In the end, science as we know it has two basic types of practitioners. One is the educated man who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery, whether it hides in a snails eye or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ. The second kind of observer is the extreme reductionist who is so busy stripping things apart that the tremendous mystery has been reduced to a trifle, to intangibles not worth troubling one’s head about.
Extreme | Light | Man | Mystery | Science | Sense | Wonder | Worth |
We distrust our heart too much, and our head not enough.
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Lord, let me make this rule to think of life as school, and try my best to stand each test, and do my work and nothing shirk. Should someone else outshine this dullard head of mine, should I be sad? I will be glad. To do my best is Thy behest. Some day the bell will sound, some day my heart will bound, as that with a shout, that school is out and lessons done, I homeward run.
Day | Heart | Life | Life | Lord | Nothing | Rule | Sound | Will | Work | Think |
A person may sometimes have a clear conscience simply because his head is empty.
Satchel Paige, fully Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige
Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.
True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt; its essence is love: it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper. It is a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting as it were, into our affections what is below us, while sublimity draws down into our affections what is above us.