This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To quote copiously and well requires taste, judgment and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound.
Appreciation | Erudition | Judgment | Sense | Taste | Wisdom | Appreciation |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Common sense is only a modification of talent. Genius is an exaltation of it. The difference is, therefore, in degree, not nature.
Common Sense | Genius | Nature | Sense | Wisdom |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Wherever progress ends, decline in variably begins; but remember that the healthful progress of society is like the natural life of man - it consists in the gradual and harmonious development of all its constitutional powers, all its component parts, and you introduce weakness and disease into the whole system whether you attempt to stint or to force its growth.
Disease | Ends | Force | Growth | Life | Life | Man | Progress | Society | System | Weakness | Wisdom | Society |
The grandest operations, both in nature and in grace, are the most silent and imperceptible. The shallow brook babbles in its passage, and is heard by every one; but the coming on of the seasons is silent and unseen. The storm rages and alarms, but its fury is soon exhausted, and its effects are partial and soon remedied; but the dew, though gentle and unheard, is immense in quantity, and the very life of large portions of the earth. And these are pictures of the operations of the grace in the church and in the soul.
Church | Earth | Fury | Grace | Life | Life | Nature | Soul | Wisdom |
The passions and capacities of our nature are foundations of power, happiness and glory; but if we turn them into occasions and sources of self-indulgence, the structure itself falls, and buries everything in its overwhelming desolation.
Desolation | Glory | Indulgence | Nature | Power | Self | Wisdom | Happiness |
Charlie Chaplin, formally Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin
Beauty is an omnipresence of death and loveliness, a smiling sadness that we discern in nature and all things, a mystic communion that the poet feels.
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
Conscience is a great ledger book in which all our offenses are written and registered, and which time reveals to the sense and feeling of the offender.
Conscience | Sense | Time | Wisdom |
Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
Sickness and disease are in weak minds the sources of melancholy; but that which is painful to the body, may be profitable to the soul. Sickness puts us in mind of our mortality, and, while we drive on heedlessly in the full career of worldly pomp and jollity, kindly pulls us by the ear, and brings us to a proper sense of duty.
Body | Disease | Duty | Melancholy | Mind | Sense | Soul | Wisdom |
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
The true proof of the inherent nobleness of our common nature is in the sympathy it betrays with what is noble whenever crowds are collected. Never believe the world base; if it were so, no society could hold together for a day.
Day | Nature | Society | Sympathy | Wisdom | World | Society |
Getters generally don't get happiness; givers get it. You simply give to others a bit of yourself - a thoughtful act, a helpful idea, a word of appreciation., a lift over a rough spot, a sense of understanding, a timely suggestion. You take something out of your mind, garnished in kindness out of your heart, and put it into the other fellow's mind and heart.
Appreciation | Heart | Kindness | Mind | Sense | Understanding | Wisdom |