This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is certain that a serious attention to the sciences and liberal arts softens and humanizes the temper, and cherishes those fine emotions in which true virtue and honor consist. It very rarely happens that a man of taste and learning is not, at least, an honest man, whatever frailties may attend him.
Attention | Emotions | Frailties | Honor | Learning | Man | Taste | Temper | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
Waste not your strength trying to push shut doors which God is opening. Neither wear yourself out in keeping open doors which ought to be forever sealed. Some episode in your life, over which you are anxious, is closed. it is in the past. Whatever its memory, you cannot change it. But you can shut the door. Go into some silent place of thought. Test your self-respect. Ask your soul, "Have I emerged from this experience with honor, or if not, can honor be retrieved?" And if your soul answers, "Yes," close then the door to that Past; hang a garland over the portal if you will, but come away without tarrying. The east is aflame with the radiance of the morning, and before you stands many another door, held open by the hand of God.
Change | Experience | God | Honor | Life | Life | Memory | Past | Respect | Self | Soul | Strength | Thought | Waste | Will | Wisdom | God |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
In all things except those that are simply bad, change is to be feared: change of seasons, winds, food, and humors. And no laws are held in their true honor except those to which God has given some ancient duration, so that no one knows their origin or that they were ever different.
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
As virtue is necessary in a republic, and in a monarchy honor, so fear is necessary in a despotic government: with regard to virtue, there is no occasion for it, and honor would be extremely dangerous.
Fear | Government | Honor | Regard | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
We do not honor the fathers by going back to the place where they stopped but by going on toward the things their vision foresaw.
Money is both the generation and corruption of purchased honor; honor is both the child and slave of potent money: the credit which honor hath lost, money hath found. When honor grew mercenary, money grew honorable. The way to be truly noble is to contemn both.
Meditation is the life of the soul; action is the soul of meditation; honor is the reward of action; so meditate, that thou mayst do; so do, that thou mayst purchase honor; for which purchase, give God the glory.
Action | Glory | God | Honor | Life | Life | Meditation | Reward | Soul | Wisdom | God |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
If they really want to honor the soldiers, why don't they let them sit in the stands and have the people march by?
There is no greater unreasonableness in the world than in the designs of ambition; for it makes the present certainly miserable, unsatisfactory, troublesome, and discontented, for the uncertain acquisition of an honor which nothing can secure; and, besides a thousand possibilities of miscarrying, it relies upon no greater certainty than our life; and when we are dead all the world sees who was the fool.
Ambition | Honor | Life | Life | Nothing | Present | Wisdom | World |
The conquest of oneself is better than the conquest of all others.
A person cannot honor that which does not affect his finer sensibilities, his conscience, his sense of meaning.
Conscience | Honor | Meaning | Sense |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The mischief of flattery is not that it persuades any man that he is what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition, by raising an opinion that honor may be gained without the toil of merit.
Ambition | Flattery | Honor | Influence | Man | Merit | Opinion |
Rites [li] rest on three bases: heaven and earth, which are the source of all life; the ancestors, who are the source of the human race; [and] sovereigns and teachers, who are the source of government... Should any of the three be missing, either there would be no people or people would be without peace. Hence rites are to serve Heaven on high and earth below, and to honor the ancestors and elevate the sovereigns and teachers... Who holds to the rites is never confused in the midst of multifarious change; who deviates therefrom is lost. Rites - are they not the culmination of culture?
Change | Culture | Earth | Government | Heaven | Honor | Human race | Life | Life | Peace | People | Race | Rest | Rites |