This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Humility is not a weak and timid quality; it must be carefully distinguished from a groveling spirit. There is such a thing as an honest pride and self-respect. Though we may be servants of all, we should be servile to none.
Nathanael Emmons, also Nathaniel Emmons
Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters.
F. E. Hulme, fully Frederick Edward Hulme
Death is the only master who takes his servants without a character.
Roger L'Estrange, fully Sir Roger L'Estrange
It is with our passions, as it is with fire and water, they are good servants but bad masters.
Paul Moody, fully Paul Dwight Moody
The measure of a man is not the number of his servants but in the number of people whom he serves.
Luxury is a remedy much worse than the disease it sets up to cure; or rather it is in itself the greatness of all evils; for every State, great or small: for, in order to maintain all the servants and vagabonds it creates, it brings oppression and ruin on the citizen and the laborer; it is like those scorching winds, which, covering the trees and plants with their devouring insects, deprive useful animals of their subsistence and spread famine and death wherever they blow.
Character | Death | Disease | Greatness | Luxury | Oppression | Order |
Edward Coke, fully Sir Edward Coke
The house of every man is his castle, and if thieves come to a man’s house to rob or murder, and the owner or his servants kill any of the thieves in defense of himself and his house, it is no felony and he lose nothing.
Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.
Consideration | Democracy | Good | Men | Public | Servitude | Talking | Will | Wisdom | Work |
R. W. Sellars, fully Roy Wood Sellars
The Humanist’s religion, is the religion of one who says yea to the life here and now, of one who is self-reliant, fearless, intelligent and creative... Its Goal is the mastery of things that they may become servants and instrumentalities to man’s spiritual comradeship.
Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants - both know too much of him.
Mahabharata or The Mahabharata NULL
Revenge is not always better, but neither is forgiveness; learn to know them both, son, so that there be no problem. Son, a man who is always forgiving finds many things wrong; his servants despise him, and so do outsiders. No creatures ever bow to him, and that is why the learned criticize being always forgiving.
Better | Despise | Forgiveness | Man | Revenge | Wrong | Learn |
Every man is a tamer of wild beasts, and these wild beasts are his passions. To draw their teeth and claws, to muzzle and tame them, to turn them into servants and domestic animals, fuming, perhaps, but submissive - in this consists personal education.
Man |
He who would be useful, strong, and happy, must cease to be a passive receptacle for the negative, beggardly, and impure streams of thought; and as a wise householder commands his servants and invites his guests, so must he learn to command his desires, and to say, with authority, what thought he shall admit into the mansion of his soul.