This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world: for everyone thinks himself so well endowed with it that even those who are the hardest to please in everything else do not usually desire more of it than they possess. In this it is unlikely that everyone is mistaken. It indicates rather that the power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from the false - which is what we properly call ‘good sense’ - is naturally equal in all men.
Saint Gregory, aka Pope Gregory I, St. Gregory the Dialogist, "Gregory the Great" NULL
The possession of virtue… is always abundant for those who desire it, not like the possession of the earthly, in which those who divide it off into pieces for themselves must take their share from that of the other, and the gain of the one is the neighbor’s loss. From this, because of hatred of loss, arise fights concerning wealth. But the wealth of [virtue] is unenvied, and he who [gains] more brings no penalty to him who is worth of also participating equally in it.
William Haley, fully Sir William John Haley
Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don't know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.
Walter Raleigh, fully Sir Walter Raleigh
If any friend desire thee to be his surety, give him a part of what thou hast to spare; if he press thee further, he is not thy friend at all, for friendship rather chooseth harm to find itself than offereth it. If thou be bound for a stranger, thou art a fool; if for a merchant, thou puttest thy estate to learn to swim.
Get not your friends by bare compliments, but by giving them sensible tokens of your love. It is well worth while to learn how to win the heart of a man the right way... Excite them by your civilities, and show them that you desire nothing more than their satisfaction; oblige with all your soul that friend who has made you a present of his own.
Desire | Friend | Giving | Heart | Love | Man | Nothing | Present | Right | Soul | Worth | Friends | Learn |
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
To each individual in the world will take on a different connotation of meaning - the importance lies in the desire to search for an answer.
All men desire peace but few indeed desire those things which make for peace.
The Courage we desire and prize is not the Courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved.
To pretend to devotion without great humility and renunciation of all worldly tempers is to pretend to impossibilities. He that would be devout must first be humble, have a full sense of his own miseries and wants and the vanity of the world, and then his soul will be full of desire after God. A proud, or vain, or worldly-minded man may use a manual of prayers, but he cannot be devout, because devotion is the application of an humble heart to God as its only happiness.
Desire | Devotion | God | Heart | Humility | Man | Sense | Soul | Wants | Will | World | God |