This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vanity is a strong temptation to lying; it makes people magnify their merit, over-flourish their family, and tell strange stories of their interest and acquaintance.
Acquaintance | Family | Lying | Merit | People | Temptation | Wisdom | Temptation |
Every serious-minded person knows that a large part of the effort required in moral discipline consists in the courage needed to acknowledge the unpleasant consequences of one's past and present acts.
Consequences | Courage | Discipline | Effort | Past | Present | Wisdom |
Grover Cleveland, fully Stephen Grover Cleveland
Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.
Government | People | Wisdom | Government |
Richard Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough
The happy gift of being agreeable seems to consist not in one, but in an assemblage of talents tending to communicate delight; and how many are there, who, by easy manners, sweetness of temper, and a variety of other undefinable qualities, possess the power of pleasing without any visible effort, without the aids of wit, wisdom, or learning, nay, as it should seem in their defiance; and this without appearing even to know that they possess it.
Defiance | Effort | Happy | Learning | Manners | Power | Qualities | Temper | Wisdom | Wit |
Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children but gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion, there would be neither mathematics nor natural science.
Children | Mathematics | Music | Passion | People | Wisdom |
Perseverance is not a long race; if it many short races one after another.
Perseverance | Race | Wisdom |
In the first place, the human mind, no matter how highly trained, is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many tongues. The little child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind to God. And because I believe this, I am not an atheist.
Books | God | Little | Mind | Order | Plan | Universe | Wisdom | Child | Understand |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quiet apart form any fluctuations that went before - consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.
Consequences | Deeds | Quiet | Wisdom | Deeds |