This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred.
Character | Leisure | Men | Temptation | Time |
Waste of time is the most extravagant and costly of all expenses.
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Duties are not performed for duty’s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable with himself.
While an open mind is priceless, it is priceless only when its owner has the courage to make a final decision which closes the mind for action after the process of viewing all sides of the question has been completed. Failure to make a decision after due consideration of all the facts will quickly brand a man unfit for a position of responsibility. Not all of your decisions will be correct. None of us is perfect. But if you get into the habit of making decisions, experience will develop your judgment to a point where more and more of your decisions will be right. After all, it is better to be right 51 percent of the time and get something done, than it is to get nothing done because you fear to reach a decision.
Action | Better | Consideration | Courage | Decision | Experience | Failure | Fear | Habit | Judgment | Man | Mind | Nothing | Position | Question | Responsibility | Right | Time | Will | Wisdom | Failure |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
This is a property of the rational soul, love of one’s neighbor, and truth and modesty, and to value nothing more than itself, which is also the property of Law. Thus then right reason differs not at all from the reason of justice.
Justice | Law | Love | Modesty | Nothing | Property | Reason | Right | Soul | Truth | Wisdom | Value |
Jacqueline-Marie-Angélique Arnauld, or Arnault, called La Mère Angélique
Perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. Neglect nothing; the most trivial action may be performed to God.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Grand is the seen, the light, to me - grand are the sky and stars, grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space, but grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those, lighting the slight, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea, (what were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?) More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul! More multiform far - more lasting thou than they.
Elsa Yur'evna Triolet, Born Ella Kagan
Killing time or killing yourself amounts to the same thing, strictly speaking.
The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down to the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the common sense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.
Character | Common Sense | Light | Men | Morality | Nations | Proverbs | Sense | Time | Wise | Wit | Old |