This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Good taste is the product of judgment rather than of intellect.
Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
Good | Integrity | Intelligence | Sense | Taste |
The study of art is a taste at once engrossing and unselfish, which may be indulged without effort, and yet has the power of exciting the deepest emotions - a taste able to exercise and to gratify both the nobler and softer parts of our nature.
Art | Effort | Emotions | Nature | Power | Study | Taste | Art |
Live each season as it passes; breath the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Taste |
The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness - the taste and strain from the lees of the vat.
Bitterness | Sorrow | Taste |
If we judge objects merely according to concepts, then all representation of beauty is lost. Thus there can be no rule according to which anyone is to be forced to recognizes anything as beautiful... The beautiful is that which pleases universally without a concept... There can be no objective rule of taste which shall determine by means of concept what is beautiful.
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 |
No civilization professes openly to be unable to declare its destination. In an age like our own, however, there comes a time when individuals in increasing numbers unconsciously seek direction and taste despair.
Age | Civilization | Despair | Taste | Time |
Most of us believe that the freedom and power of adulthood is our due, but we have little taste for adult responsibility and self-discipline.
Discipline | Freedom | Little | Power | Responsibility | Self | Taste |
Goodwill is the one and only asset that competition cannot undersell nor destroy.
Competition | Destroy |
Evolution is the result of competition between organisms for the energy required for survival... If there is any meaning to the past, it is to be found in the increase in the complexity of material structures and information over time
Competition | Energy | Evolution | Meaning | Past | Survival | Time |
The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.
Competition | Power | Thought | Truth | Thought |
When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas - that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.
Better | Competition | Conduct | Fighting | Good | Ideas | Men | Power | Thought | Time | Truth | Wishes | Thought |
Knowledge is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition to the development of our consciousness.
Competition | Consciousness | Knowledge | Myth | Self | Theories |
The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas [and] the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.
Better | Competition | Good | Ideas | Power | Thought | Truth | Thought |
Those wretches who never have experienced the sweets of wisdom and virtue, but spend all their time in revels and debauches, sink downward day after day, and make their whole life one continued series of errors. They taste no real or substantial pleasure; but, resembling so many brutes, with eyes always fixed on the earth, and intent upon their loaden tables, they pamper themselves in luxury and excess.
Day | Earth | Excess | Life | Life | Luxury | Pleasure | Taste | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.
Bitterness | Civilization | Good | Laughter | Men | Property | Riches | Taste | Will | Riches |
It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God’s heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.
Day | Death | Difficulty | God | Heart | Heaven | Hero | Life | Life | Man | Taste | Wrong |