This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The man who knows when not to act is wise. To my mind, bravery is forethought.
The bravery founded on hope of recompense, fear of punishment, experience of success, on rage, or on ignorance of danger, is but common bravery, and does not deserve the name. True bravery proposes a just end; measures the dangers, and meets the result with calmness and unyielding decision.
Bravery | Calmness | Character | Danger | Decision | Experience | Fear | Hope | Ignorance | Punishment | Rage | Recompense | Success |
True bravery is shown by performing, without witnesses, what one might be capable of doing before all the world.
To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics.
Beauty, purity, respectability, religion, morality, art, patriotism, bravery and the rest… are mere words, useful for duping barbarians into adopting civilization, or the civilized poor into submitting to be robbed and enslaved. This is the family secret of the governing class.
Art | Beauty | Bravery | Civilization | Family | Morality | Patriotism | Purity | Religion | Rest | Words |
Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery - courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things. This is one of the chief elements in what we vaguely call capacity. If you do not dare differ from your associates and teachers you will never be great or your life sublime. You may be the happier as a result, or you may be miserable. Each of us is great insofar as we perceive and act on the infinite possibilities which lie undiscovered and unrecognized about us.
Associates | Bravery | Capacity | Courage | Greatness | Ideas | Life | Life | Will | Old |
Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
Let bravery be thy choice, but not bravado.
The world has a way of giving what is demanded of it. If you are frightened and look for failure and poverty, you will get them, no matter how hard you may try to succeed. Lack of faith in yourself, in what life will do for you, cuts you off from the good things of the world. Expect victory and you make victory. Nowhere is this truer than in business life, where bravery and faith bring both material and spiritual rewards.
Bravery | Business | Failure | Faith | Giving | Good | Life | Life | Poverty | Will | World | Failure | Business |
Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of the rest or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance... Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world that yields most painfully to change.
Battle | Bravery | Censure | Change | Courage | Daring | Energy | Hope | Injustice | Injustice | Intelligence | Man | Oppression | Rest | Society | Time | World |
Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is one essential vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.
Battle | Bravery | Censure | Change | Courage | Intelligence | Society | World |