This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Too many follow example rather than precept; but it is safer to learn rather from precept than example. Man a wise teacher does not follow his own teaching; for it is easier to say, do this, than to do it. If then I see good doctrine with an evil life, though I pity the last, I will follow the first. Good sayings belong to all; evil actions only to their authors.
Character | Doctrine | Evil | Example | Good | Life | Life | Man | Pity | Precept | Will | Wise | Learn | Teacher |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
All sin is a form of lying...Total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.
Abstinence | Lying | Moderation | Sin | Wisdom |
The first and worst of all frauds is the cheat one's self. All sin is easy after that.
The hatred of the vicious will do you less harm than their conversation.
Conversation | Harm | Will | Wisdom |
Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England
As thou desirest the love of God and man, beware of pride. It is a tumor in the mind, that breaks and ruins all thine actions; a worm in thy treasury, that eats and ruins thine estate. It loves no man, and is beloved of none; it disparages another's virtues by detraction, and thine own vainglory. It is the friend of the flatterer, the mother of envy, the nurse of fury, the sin of devils, and devil of mankind. It hates superiors, scorns inferiors, and owns no equal. In short, till thou hate it, God hate thee.
Devil | Envy | Friend | Fury | God | Hate | Love | Man | Mankind | Mind | Mother | Pride | Sin | Wisdom | God |
Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
Every other sin hath some pleasures annexed to it, or will admit of some excuse, but envy wants both. We should strive against it, for if indulged in it will be to us as a foretaste of hell upon earth.
God made sin possible just as he made all lying wonders possible, but he never made it a fact, never set anything in his plan to harmonize with it. Therefore it enters the world as a forbidden fact against everything that God has ordained.
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.
Cause | Example | Mother | Truth | Wisdom | Witness | Instruction |
Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
Know what your sin is and confess it; but do not imagine that you have approved yourself a penitent by confessing sin in the abstract.
Midge Decter, fully Midge Rosenthal Decter
The hatred of the youth culture for adult society is not a disinterested judgment but a terror-ridden refusal to be hooked into the... ecological chain of birthing, growing and dying. It is the demand, in other words, to remain children.
Children | Culture | Judgment | Society | Terror | Wisdom | Words | Youth | Society | Youth |