This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Luxury is a remedy much worse than the disease it sets up to cure; or rather it is in itself the greatness of all evils; for every State, great or small: for, in order to maintain all the servants and vagabonds it creates, it brings oppression and ruin on the citizen and the laborer; it is like those scorching winds, which, covering the trees and plants with their devouring insects, deprive useful animals of their subsistence and spread famine and death wherever they blow.
Character | Death | Disease | Greatness | Luxury | Oppression | Order |
True greatness consists in being great in little things.
Immortality is the greatness of our being; the scene for attaining the fullness and perfection of our existence.
Character | Existence | Greatness | Immortality | Perfection |
Henry Wotton, fully Sir Henry Wotton
Virtue is the roughest way, but proves at night a bed of down.
There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants - more than anything else - to become rich. As long as they don't have the money, it will seem like a worthwhile goal. Once they do, they will understand how important other things are - and have always been.
Important | Money | Thinking | Wants | Will | Wisdom | Understand |
Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
Every other sin hath some pleasures annexed to it, or will admit of some excuse, but envy wants both. We should strive against it, for if indulged in it will be to us as a foretaste of hell upon earth.
Bette Davis, Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis
The person who wants to make it has to sweat. There are no short cuts. And you've got to have the guts to be hated.
To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face; to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains; to approach my work with a clean mind; to hold ever before me, even in the doing of little things, the Ultimate Purpose toward which I am working; to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart; to be gentle, kind and courteous through all the hours; to approach the night with weariness that ever woos sleep and the joy that goes with work well done - this is how I desire to waste wisely my days.
Day | Desire | Heart | Joy | Laughter | Little | Love | Men | Mind | Purpose | Purpose | Reverence | Smile | Waste | Wisdom | Work |