This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The uprooting of human beings from the land, the concentration in cities, the breakdown of the authority of family, of tradition, and of moral conventions, the complexity and the novelty of modern life, and finally the economic insecurity of our industrial system have called into being the modern social worker. They perform a function in modern society which is not a luxury but an absolute necessity.
Absolute | Authority | Family | Insecurity | Land | Life | Life | Luxury | Necessity | Novelty | Society | System | Tradition | Wisdom | Society | Novelty |
William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa
No man’s spirits were ever hurt by doing his duty; on the contrary, one good action, one temptation resisted and overcome, one sacrifice of desire or interest, purely for conscience’ sake, will prove a cordial for weak and low spirits, far beyond what either indulgence or diversion or company can do for them.
Action | Conscience | Desire | Diversion | Duty | Good | Indulgence | Man | Sacrifice | Temptation | Will | Wisdom | Temptation |
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
The man whom neither riches nor luxury nor grandeur can render happy may, with a book in his hand, forget all his troubles under the friendly shade of every tree, and may experience pleasures as infinite as they are varied, as pure as they are lasting, as lively as they are unfading, and as compatible with every public duty as they are contributory to private happiness.
Duty | Experience | Happy | Luxury | Man | Public | Riches | Troubles | Wisdom | Riches |
So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. The reaction must come. The tower leans from its foundation, and every new story but hastens the final catastrophe.
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
When princes think more of luxury than of arms, they lose their state.
Meaning is not a luxury for us… It is a kind of spiritual oxygen, we might say, that enables our souls to live.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
If unlimited private indulgence means that there are not enough resources left for national defense or for education or medical care or decent housing or intelligent community planning, then in a sane society private indulgence can no longer be unlimited.
Care | Defense | Education | Enough | Indulgence | Means | Society | Society |
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Grief is the agony of an instant: the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
Agony | Grief | Indulgence | Life | Life |
Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in the world.
No indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.
Indulgence | Nature | Passion | Selfishness |
The point of practicing an art is less to discover who you are than to become your truth, to be able to shed all sham, imposture and bluff in relation to yourself and others. True art is not an indulgence of the little self, but a manifestation of the Self.
Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.
Enlightenment | Freedom | Luxury | Prosperity | Security |