This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Solitary we must be in life's great hours of moral decisions; solitary in pain and sorrow; solitary in old age and in our going forth at death. Fortunate the man who has learned what to do in solitude and brought himself to see what companionship he may discover in it, what fortitude, what content.
Age | Character | Death | Fortitude | Life | Life | Man | Old age | Pain | Solitude | Sorrow | Companionship | Old |
Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson
In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one every thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
Age | Good | Myth | People | Thought | Time | Wisdom | Old | Thought |
We are too much inclined to underrate the power of moral influence, the influence of public opinion, and the influence of the principles to which great men - the lights of the world, and of the present age - have given their sanction.
Age | Character | Influence | Men | Opinion | Power | Present | Principles | Public | World |
Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf
Most forms of human creativity have one aspect n common: the attempt to give some sense to the various impressions, emotions, experiences, and actions that fill our lives, and thereby to give some meaning and value to our existence... The crisis of our time in the Western world is that the search for meaning has become meaningless for many of us.
Character | Creativity | Emotions | Existence | Meaning | Search | Sense | Time | World | Crisis | Value |
Extreme old age is childhood; extreme wisdom is ignorance, for so it may be called, since the man whom the oracle pronounced the wisest of men professed that he knew nothing; yea, push a coward to the extreme and he will show courage; oppress a man to the last, and he will rise above oppression.
Age | Childhood | Courage | Extreme | Ignorance | Man | Men | Nothing | Old age | Oppression | Will | Wisdom | Old |
Ours is the age of substitutes; instead of language, we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas.
Age | Ideas | Language | Principles | Wisdom |
Joe Bayly, fully Joseph Tate Bayly
In an age of the inconsequential and frivolous, reading fills our minds with the consequential. Reading involves stewardship of a mind, that was created in the divine image, to think great thoughts as well as to notice the small sparrow. Reading stretches the mind.
Ludwig Börne, fully Karl Ludwig Börne
Not years but experiences age us; hence man would be the unhappiest of creatures were he a diligent pupil of experience. That each new generation and each new era starts out from the cradle is what keeps mankind eternally young.
Much has been said of the wisdom of old age. Old age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to execute them; wise in shrinking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted.
Action | Age | Danger | Difficulty | Mankind | Old age | Power | Strength | Time | Wisdom | Wise | Old |
Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu
If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.
Search | Wisdom | Understand |