This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nothing being so beautiful to the eye as truth is to the mind; nothing so deformed and irreconcilable to the understanding as a lie.
Character | Mind | Nothing | Truth | Understanding |
A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything out of focus. Hold it at a proper viewing distance and it can be examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway to eternity.
Petty vexations may at times be petty, but still they are vexations. The smallest and most inconsiderable annoyances are the most piercing. As small letters weary the eye most, so also the smallest affairs disturb us most.
A cheerful temper spreads like the dawn, and all vapors disperse before it. Even the tear dries on the cheek, and the sigh sinks away half-breathed when the eye of benignity beams upon the unhappy.
There is nothing a man can less afford to leave at home than his conscience or his good habits; for it is not to be denied that travel is, in its immediate circumstances, unfavorable to habits of self-discipline, regulation of thought, sobriety of conduct, and dignity of character. Indeed, one of the great lessons of travel is the discovery how much our virtues owe to the support of constant occupation, to the influence of public opinion, and to the force of habit; a discovery very dangerous, if it proceed from an actual yielding to temptations resisted at home, and not from a consciousness of increased power put forth in withstanding them.
Character | Circumstances | Conduct | Conscience | Consciousness | Dignity | Discipline | Discovery | Force | Good | Habit | Influence | Man | Nothing | Occupation | Opinion | Power | Public | Regulation | Self | Thought | Yielding | Discovery |
You can be deprived of your money, your job and your home by someone else, but remember that no none can ever take away your honor.
The pinions of your soul will have power to still the untamed body. The creature will yield only to watchful, strenuous constancy of habit. Purify your soul from all undue hope and fear about earthly things, mortify the body, deny self - affections as well as appetites - and the inner eye will begin to exercise its clear and solemn vision.
Body | Character | Constancy | Fear | Habit | Hope | Power | Self | Soul | Vision | Will |
If any speak ill of thee, flee home to thy own conscience, and examine thy heart: if thou be guilty, it is a just correction; if not guilty, it is a fair instruction: make use of both; so shalt thou distill honey out of gall, and out of an open enemy create a secret friend.
Whatever you have received more than others - in health, in talents, in ability, in success, in a pleasant childhood, in harmonious conditions of home life - all this you must not take to yourself as a matter of course. In gratitude for your good fortune, you must render in return some sacrifice of your own life for another life.
Ability | Character | Childhood | Fortune | Good | Gratitude | Health | Life | Life | Sacrifice | Success |
Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart.
The eye - it cannot choose but see; we cannot bid the ear be still; our bodies feel, where ’er they be, against or with our will.
The world is a great book, of which they who never stir from home read only a page.
Develop the art of friendliness. One can experience a variety of emotions staying home and reading or watching television; one will be alive but hardly living. Most of the meaningful aspects of life are closely associated with people. Even the dictionary definition of life involves people.
Art | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | People | Reading | Television | Will | Wisdom | Art |