This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like cuttlefish squirting out ink.
Aims | Enemy | Insincerity | Language | Words |
A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend of his faults… To speak painful truth through loving words – that is friendship.
Friend | Truth | Words | Friendship |
For that man is detested by me as the gates of hell, whose outward words conceal his inmost thoughts.
Deeds are mightier than words are, actions mightier than boastings.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
Language | Words | Friendship |
The quality of impeccability entails realizing how precious life is, even though it is transient, and how each of our actions and words does count, affecting all beings around us in a profound way. There is nothing inconsequential in this universe, and we need to personally respect this fact and act in accordance with it.
Life | Life | Need | Nothing | Respect | Universe | Words | Respect |
Slogans are both exciting and comforting, but some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words and phrases.
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign asters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law. Systems which attempt to question it deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.
Darkness | Effort | Law | Light | Man | Mankind | Nature | Object | Pain | Pleasure | Question | Reality | Reason | Right | Sense | System | Will | Words | Wrong | Govern |
Some of mankind’s most errible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.
The moment a man can really do his work, he becomes speechless about it; all words are idle to him; all theories. Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, or boast of it when built? All good work is essentially done that way; without hesitation; without difficulty; without boasting.
Boasting | Difficulty | Good | Man | Need | Theories | Words | Work |
The whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction, I use the words with their weight in them; in taking of stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes and faiths. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies, not a moment of which, once past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron.
Something has clearly gone awry when students at prestigious institutions of higher learning cannot bring themselves to denounce Auschwitz and Treblinka. Too many Americans now shrink from appearing "judgmental" or "moralistic" - the very words themselves are now used only as pejoratives. The prevailing attitude is: "Who's to say what's right or wrong?"