This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The exercise of criticism always destroys for a time our sensibility to beauty by leading us to regard the work in relation to certain laws of construction. The eye turns from the charms of nature to fix itself upon the servile dexterity of art.
Art | Beauty | Criticism | Nature | Regard | Sensibility | Time | Wisdom | Work | Beauty |
Hebrew has but one word - Avoda - for work and worship.
Arnold Bennett, fully Enoch Thomas Arnold Bennett
Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley
Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
We look at change but we do not see it. We speak of change, but we do not think about it. We say that change exists, that everything changes, that change is the very law of things: yes, we say it and we repeat it; but those are only words, and we reason and philosophize as though change did not exist.
Eugene P. Bertin, fully Eugene Peter Bertin
Honest work bears a lovely face for it is the father of pleasure and the mother of good fortune. It is the keystone of prosperity and the sire of fame. And best of all, work is relief from sorrow and the handmaiden of happiness.
Fame | Father | Fortune | Good | Mother | Pleasure | Prosperity | Sorrow | Wisdom | Work |
R. H. Blyth, fully Reginald Horace Blyth
We are to live with life and die with death, not separated from them. The problem of suffering is insoluble, because we think of ourselves as apart from pain and death, in opposition to them. We can be free from change only by changing with it.
Change | Death | Life | Life | Opposition | Pain | Suffering | Wisdom | Think |
Max Beerbohm, fully Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm
No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
J.M. Barrie, fully Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet
Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
The fact remains that the overwhelming majority of people who have become wealthy have become so thanks to work they found profoundly absorbing. The long term study of people who eventually became wealthy clearly reveals that their "luck" arose from accidental dedication they had to an arena they enjoyed.
Dedication | Luck | Majority | People | Study | Wisdom | Work |
W. Lambert Brittain, fully William Lambert Brittain
If it were possible for children to develop without any interference from the outside world, no special stimulation for their creative work would be necessary. Every child would use his deeply rooted creative impulses without inhibition, confident.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Art itself is essentially ethical; because every true work of art must have a beauty and grandeur cannot be comprehended by the beholder except through the moral sentiment. The eye is only a witness; it is not a judge. The mind judges what the eye reports to it; therefore, whatever elevates the moral sentiment to the contemplation of beauty and grandeur is in itself ethical.
Art | Beauty | Contemplation | Mind | Sentiment | Wisdom | Witness | Work | Art | Beauty | Contemplation |