This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately... They have as yet met with few disappointments. Their lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can only look forward... They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral goodness leads us to choose what is noble. They are fonder of their friends, intimates, and companions than older men are, because they like spending their days in the company of others, and have not yet come to value either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too much and hate too much, and the same thing with everything else. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.
Day | Deeds | Expectation | Future | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Men | Nothing | Past | Precept | Usefulness | Youth | Deeds | Youth | Expectation | Friends | Think | Value |
Prosperity makes friends and adversity tries them.
Adversity | Prosperity | Friends |
I lay it down as a fact that, if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. This appears from the quarrels to which indiscreet reports occasionally give rise.
Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion. Man is, then, only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He does not wish any one to tell him the truth; he avoids telling it to others, and all these dispositions, so removed from justice and reason, have a natural root in his heart. I set it down as a fact that if all men know what each said to the other, there would not be four friends in the world.
Absence | Deceit | Disguise | Falsehood | Friend | Heart | Hypocrisy | Illusion | Justice | Life | Life | Man | Men | Passion | Reason | Regard | Sincerity | Society | Truth | World | Society | Friends |
Imagination cannot makes fools wise; but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason, who can only make her friends miserable.
The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world.
Calamity | Death | Disease | Good | Grave | Health | Malice | Misfortune | Nothing | Property | Reputation | Respect | Riches | World | Riches | Respect | Friends |
Some men are more beholden to their bitterest enemies than to friends who appear to be sweetness itself. The former frequently tell the truth, but the latter never.
He that openly tells his friends all that he thinks of them, must expect that they will secretly tell his enemies much that they do not think of him.
The reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortune, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude.
Adversity | Fortune | Gratitude | Little | Man | Men | Pity | Reason | Revenge | Friends |
Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them.
Friends |
The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral; and the only thing which we most want, happens to the be the only thing we never purchase - our coffin.
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
The Master said... 'Have no friends not equal to yourself'....The Master said, 'The superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks of comfort'... The Master said, 'It is only the wisest and the very stupidest who cannot change.'... Being true to oneself is the law of God. To try to be true to oneself is the law of man.
Change | Comfort | God | Law | Man | Virtue | Virtue | Friends |
If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sake rather than our own.
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Have no friends not equal to yourself.
Friends |
In prosperity friends do not leave you unless desired, whereas in adversity they stay away of their own accord.
Adversity | Prosperity | Friends |
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
You can make more friends in two months by becoming really interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.