This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ian Maclaren, pseudonymn of Rev. John Watson
Be kind; every man you meet is fighting a hard battle.
The foundation of all understanding... is that no static maintenance of perfection is possible. This axiom is rooted in the nature of things. Advance or Decadence are the only choices offered to mankind. The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe.
Decadence | Fighting | Mankind | Nature | Perfection | Understanding | Universe |
The responsibility for change… lies with us. We must begin with ourselves, teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, the surprising, the seemingly radical. This means fighting off the idea-assassins who rush forward to kill any new suggestion on grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, not matter how absurd, oppressive, or unworkable it may be. It means fighting for freedom of expression – the right of people to voice their ideas, even if heretical.
Absurd | Change | Fighting | Freedom | Ideas | Kill | Means | People | Responsibility | Right |
Some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral, philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom being intellectual, liberality and temperance moral. For in speaking about a man’s character we do not say that he is wise or has understanding but that he is good-tempered or temperate; yet we praise the wise man also with respect to his state of mind; and of states of mind we call those which merit praise virtues.
Character | Good | Man | Merit | Mind | Praise | Respect | Understanding | Wisdom | Wise | Respect |
Unwelcome are the loiterer, who makes appointments he never keeps; the consulter, who asks advice he never follows; the boaster, who seeks for praise he does not merit; the complainer, who whines only to be pitied; the talker, who talks only because he loves to talk always; the profane and obscene jester, whose words defile; the drunkard, whose insanity has tot the better of his reason; and the tobacco-chewer and smoker, who poisons the atmosphere and nauseates others.
Advice | Better | Insanity | Merit | Praise | Reason | Words |
Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda NULL
If you want to praise, praise God. If you want to blame, blame yourself.
Never talk of yourself. You must either praise yourself, which is vain, or blame yourself, which is small-minded.
If we regulate our conduct according to our own convictions, we may safely disregard the praise or censure of others.
Censure | Conduct | Convictions | Praise |
It has been shrewdly said that when men abuse us, we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise censure which we do not deserve, and still more rare to despise praise, which we do. But that integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.
Abuse | Censure | Despise | Integrity | Men | Opinion | Praise | Virtue | Virtue |
Expect not praise without envy until you are dead. Honors bestowed on the illustrious dead have in them no admixture of envy; for the living pity the dead; and pity and envy, like oil and vinegar, assimilate not.
There are three kinds of praise - that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
You can be cured in 14 days patients afflicted with melancholia if you follow this prescription. Try to think every day how you can please someone. It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow man who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring. All that we demand of a human being and the highest praise we can give him, is that he should be a good fellow worker, a friend to all other men, and a true partner in love and marriage.
Day | Friend | Good | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Marriage | Men | Praise | Think |
We refuse praise from a desire to be praised twice.