This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett
Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
Confidence | Labor | Self | Self-confidence | Wisdom |
Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne
Not years but experiences age us; hence man would be the unhappiest of creatures were he a diligent pupil of experience. That each new generation and each new era starts out from the cradle is what keeps mankind eternally young.
Much has been said of the wisdom of old age. Old age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to execute them; wise in shrinking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted.
Action | Age | Danger | Difficulty | Mankind | Old age | Power | Strength | Time | Wisdom | Wise | Old |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
The more a man desirous to pass at a value above his worth, and can, by dignified silence, contrast with the garrulity of trivial minds, the more will the world give him credit for the wealth he does not possess.
Contrast | Credit | Man | Silence | Wealth | Will | Wisdom | World | Worth | Value |
Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England
The confirmed prejudices of the thoughtful life, are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as most must trifle away age, because they trifled away youth, others must labor on the maze of error, because they have wandered there too long to find their way.
Age | Change | Error | Labor | Life | Life | Wisdom | Youth |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
In these days half our diseases come from neglect of the body, and the over work of the brain. In this railway age the wear and tear of labor and intellect go on without pause or self-pity. We live longer than our forefathers; but we suffer more, from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares. They fatigued only the muscles; we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves.
Age | Body | Labor | Neglect | Pity | Self | Strength | Wisdom | Work | Intellect |
Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
Keep the middle path of strength and virtue, lest you be overwhelmed by misfortune or corrupted by pleasant fortune. All that falls short or goes too far ahead, has contempt for happiness, and gains not the reward for labor done. It rests in your own hands what shall be the nature of the fortune which you choose to form for yourself. For all fortune which seems difficult, either exercises virtue, or corrects or punishes vice.
Contempt | Fortune | Labor | Misfortune | Nature | Reward | Strength | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Misfortune |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud - and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope.
Benevolence | Fraud | Good | Knowledge | Little | Mankind | Wisdom | World | Friendship | Forgive | Learn |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
What men want is not talent, it is purpose; in other words, not the power to achieve, but will to labor. I believe that labor judiciously and continuously applied becomes genius.
Genius | Labor | Men | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Wisdom | Words |
There was plainly wanting a divine revelation to recover mankind out of their universal corruption and degeneracy.
Corruption | Degeneracy | Mankind | Revelation | Wisdom |
Some people, in working toward a goal, find themselves seized by inertia when it comes time for action. If this should happen to you, despite the small graduated steps, then it is time to reexamine your goal. Consider how important it actually is and then either discard the goal and replace it with a more suitable one or continue the steps with a renewed sense of the value of achieving it.
Action | Important | People | Sense | Time | Wisdom | Inertia | Value |