This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mediocrity obtains more with application than superiority without it.
The artist, depicting man disdainful of the storm and stress of life, is no less reconciling and healing than the poet who, while endowing Nature and Humanity, rejoices in its measureless superiority to human passions and human sorrows.
There is a difference between the two temporal blessings - health and money; money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflect that the poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all his money for health.
Blessings | Health | Man | Money | Superiority |
There is this difference between the two temporal blesses - health and money; money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflect that the poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest man would gladly part with all his money for health.
Health | Man | Money | Superiority |
The history of the world and its peoples in three words – “Born, troubled, died.”
Charles A. Beard, fully Charles Austin Beard
All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Faith is the very heroism and enterprise of intellect. Faith is not a passivity but a faculty. Faith is a power, the material of effect. Faith is a kind of winged intellect. The great workmen of history have been men who believed like giants.
Examine the history of all nations and all centuries and you will always find men subject to three codes: the code of nature, the code of society, and the code of religion; and constrained to infringe upon al three codes in succession, for these codes never were in harmony. the result of this has been that never was in any country... a real man, a real citizen, or a real believer.
Harmony | History | Man | Men | Nations | Nature | Religion | Society | Will |
Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.
Contention | Despair | Fear | Force | Future | History | Humanity | Love | Man | Mankind | Memory | Mind | Motives | Nature | Past | Peace | Pity | Power | Pride | Property | Silence | Society | Submission | Success | Society |
The preservation of peace and the improvement of the lot of all people require us to have faith in the rationality of humans. If we have this faith and if we pursue understanding, we have not the promise but at least the possibility of success. We should not be misled by promises. Humanity in all its history has repeatedly escaped disaster by a hair’s breadth. Total security has never been available to anyone. To expect it is unrealistic; to imagine that it can exist is to invite disaster.
Faith | History | Humanity | Improvement | Peace | People | Promise | Rationality | Security | Success | Understanding |
The two Antonines... governed the Roman world forty-two years, with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue... Their united reigns are possible the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.
Government | History | Object | People | Spirit | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | World | Happiness |
The justest division of human learning is that derived from the three different faculties of the soul, the seat of learning; history being relative to the memory, poetry to the imagination, and philosophy to the reason.
History | Imagination | Learning | Memory | Philosophy | Poetry | Reason | Soul |