This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest wisdom within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.
It is by what we ourselves have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be remembered after ages. It is by thought that has aroused the intellect from its slumbers, which has given luster to virtue and dignity to truth, or by those examples which have inflamed the soul with the love of goodness.
Character | Dignity | Love | Soul | Thought | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Intellect | Thought |
Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straight forwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferior, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer. Be what you say; and, within the rules of prudence, say what you are.
Elegance | Language | Power | Prudence | Prudence | Simplicity | Wisdom |
Whose works exceed his wisdom, his wisdom shall endure; whose wisdom exceeds his works, his wisdom shall perish.
Wisdom |
Hermalaus Barbarus, also Ermalao or Hermalao Barbaro
Fortunately wise is he who gains wisdom from another's mishap.
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
Anyone who is thoroughly familiar with the language and literature of a people cannot be wholly its enemy.
Enemy | Language | Literature | People | Wisdom |
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 |
The thought that is beautiful is the thought to cherish. The word that is beautiful is worthy to ensure. The act that is beautiful is eternally and always true and right. Only be aware that your appreciation of beauty is just and true; and to that end, I urge you to live intimately with beauty of the highest type, until it has become a part of you , until you have within you that fineness, that order, that calm, which puts you in tune with the finest things of the universe, and which links you with that spirit that is the enduring life of the world.
Appreciation | Beauty | Life | Life | Order | Right | Spirit | Thought | Universe | Wisdom | World | Appreciation | Beauty | Thought |
Tolerance of opinions which are thought to be innocuous is as easy, as acts of charity that entail no sacrifice. But the test of a free society is its tolerance of what is deplored or despised by a majority of its members. The argument for such tolerance must be made on the ground that it is useful to the society... that free societies are better fitted to survive than closed societies.
Argument | Better | Charity | Majority | Sacrifice | Society | Thought | Wisdom | Society | Thought |