This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
You never really know your friends from your enemies until the ice breaks.
Friends |
Our wills are the slaves of the accumulated influence of our interior companionships. What we can do is to get new mental images.
Henry Adams, aka Henry Brooks Adams
A teacher affects eternity he can never tell, where his influence stops.
Huston Smith, fully Huston Cummings Smith
The most powerful moral influence is example.
The most favorable moment to seize a man and influence him is when he is alone in the mass. It is at this point that propaganda can be most effective.
Influence | Man | Propaganda |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible—nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where by beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas—where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.
Earth | Faith | Influence | Life | Life | Mother | Nothing | Past | People | Present | Sense | Old |
Jim Webb, formally James Henry Webb, Jr.
Friends are found on the battlefield, and unfortunately friends are also lost. And where do we find the measure of that sacrifice? How can we account for the value of that loss? Sometimes we can find an answer in our sense of country, at other times in our Corps. But clearly we can see it in the lives that were able to continue due to the acts of others who were not so fortunate.
Louis Agassiz, fully Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz
In-depth studies have an influence on general ideas, whereas theories, in turn, in order to maintain themselves, push their spectators to search for new evidence. The mind's activity that is maintained by the debates about these works, is probably the source of the greatest joys given to man to experience on Earth.
Experience | Influence | Man | Order | Search |
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
Only a few persons influence the formation of our character.
Jimmy Carter, fully James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.
Great American power and responsibility are not unprecedented, and have been used with restraint and great benefit in the past. We have not assumed that super strength guarantees super wisdom, and we have consistently reached out to the international community to ensure that our own power and influence are tempered by the best common judgment. Within our country, ultimate decisions are made through democratic means, which tend to moderate radical or ill-advised proposals. Constrained and inspired by historic constitutional principles, our nation has endeavored for more than two hundred years to follow the now almost universal ideals of freedom, human rights, and justice for all.
Ideals | Influence | Justice | Power | Responsibility | Restraint | Strength |
Such is friendship, that through it we love places and seasons; for as bright bodies emit rays to a distance, and flowers drop their sweet leaves on the ground around them, so friends impart favor even to the places where they dwell. With friends even poverty is pleasant. Words cannot express the joy which a friend imparts; they only can know who have experienced. A friend is dearer than the light of heaven, for it would be better for us that the sun were exhausted than that we should be without friends.
Better | Friend | Joy | Light | Love | Poverty | Words | Friends |
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection.
John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
Death | Failure | Good | Influence | Life | Life | Man | Men | Pleasure | Thought | Uncertainty | Failure | Thought |
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
Never make excuses. Your friends don't need them and your foes won't believe them.
To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.