This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.
Madame de Lambert, fully Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, Marquise de Lambert
The pleasures of the world are deceitful; they promise more than they give. They trouble us in seeking them, they do not satisfy us when possessing them and they make us despair in losing them.
Madonna Kolbenschlag, fully Madonna Claire Kolbenschlag
The promise of "beauty"- of being desirable- lulls the young woman [Sleeping Beauty] into an existential limbo where everything is measured by the expectation of one who is to come...The kiss that Sleeping Beauty waits for is not that of any Prince, but the embrace of her own being.
Beauty | Expectation | Promise | Woman | Beauty | Expectation |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
Speak quietly to yourself & promise there will be better days. Whisper gently to yourself and provide assurance that you really are extending your best effort. Console your bruised and tender spirit with reminders of many other successes. Offer comfort in practical and tangible ways - as if you were encouraging your dearest friend. recognize that on certain days the greatest grace is that the day is over and you get to close your eyes. Tomorrow comes more brightly.
Better | Comfort | Day | Grace | Promise | Spirit | Tomorrow | Will |
Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
Courage is confidence. No matter how dark night may be, courage always finds the light and the promise of a distant star.
Study the situation thoroughly, go over in your imagination the various courses of action possible to you and the consequences which can and may follow from each course. Pick out the course which gives the most promise and go ahead.
Action | Consequences | Imagination | Promise |
Publication of the "Humanist Manifesto" will, in my opinion, serve no sufficient purpose. I cannot believe with you that it will clarify the public mind, or do constructive work for the cause. A set of fifteen principles, detached from the living experience which precipitated them and lacking the life and warmth of the interests they represent, can do little to inform the mind and nothing to stir the heart. Humanism—if I understand the philosophy of it—cannot be "sold" to people. If the "Manifesto" were a rallying cry issuing with glowing conviction from a group on the march together, or if it gave promise of gripping men and women of humanistic leanings, drawing them into closer, more understanding and more active unity, it would be a desirable signal. Unfortunately, I see no such service in it. And experience has taught me to beware of deceiving myself into thinking something has really been done when all that has been done is that something has been said. It would be easier for me to write, "Sure, go ahead, put me down." If I take the harder course and do not sign the document which I know will carry the names of men I greatly admire and respect, it is because of a deep conviction that the "Manifesto" will prove to be an ineffectual gesture, and a tactical error.
Experience | Life | Life | Little | Men | Mind | Nothing | Philosophy | Promise | Public | Service | Thinking | Understanding | Will | Work | Understand |
It may seem hard to believe, but it's catastrophe that offers the most promise for an even richer life. This is the gateway to the good stuff. In other words, you never truly know which way the wind is blowing until the shit hits the fan.
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
There was a time when we the U.S. had completely unrestricted immigration, when anybody could come to these shores and the motto on the Statue of Liberty had some real meaning. This was a country of hope and of promise for immigrants and their children, and as many as a million immigrants a year came in 1906 and '07 and '08. By 1914, roughly a third of the population was foreign-born or the immediate descendants of foreign-born...The fact that year after year hundreds of thousands of people left the countries of Europe to come to this country was persuasive evidence that they were coming to improve their lot, not to worsen it.
Mike Pence, formally Michael Richard "Mike" Pence
Without the promise of confidentiality, many important conduits of information about government activity would be shut down, ... Nothing less than the public's right to know is at stake.
Government | Important | Nothing | Promise | Right | Government |
Do you know What does it mean that God exists? Means that our concerns are melting in an atmosphere of mercy and forgiveness, Forgiving Most Merciful .. Not our Lord say to us (with the lining) and narrow the vagina comes with it and in what I send a human to check on these species. Because God .. One .. There will not be in existence another god will not invalidate the promise ourselves we split the parties and will not and will not between loyalty and loyalty to the right and left and fawn fawn of the East and the West and pleaded for the rich and powerful slumped on the doorstep .. Each has strengths and each has a rich and all the knowledge he has and all that we aspire to in his hands .. And escape from it but not to him.
Existence | God | Knowledge | Lord | Loyalty | Loyalty | Means | Mercy | Promise | Right | Will | God |
Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL
Charity is a flower not naturally of earthly growth, and it needs manuring with a promise of profit.
Promise |
You will find yourself among people. There is no help for this nor should you want it otherwise. The passages where no one waits are dark and hard to navigate. The wet walls touch your shoulders on each side. When the trees were there I cared that they were there. And now they are gone, does it matter? The passages where no one waits go on and give no promise of an end. You will find yourself among people, Faces, clothing, teeth and hair and words, and many words When there was life, I said that life was wrong. What do I say now? You understand?
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
We have to realize that a unified theory of the physical world simply does not exist. We have theories that work in restricted regions, we have purely formal attempts to condense them into a single formula, we have lots of unfounded claims (such as the claim that all of chemistry can be reduced to physics), phenomena that do not fit into the accepted framework are suppressed; in physics, which many scientists regard as the one really basic science, we have now at least three different point of view (relativity, dealing with the very large, quantum theory for an intermediate domain and various particle models for the very small) without a promise of conceptual (and not only formal) unification; perceptions are outside of the material universe (the mind-body problem is still unsolved) - from the very beginning the salesman of a universal truth cheated people into admissions instead of clearly arguing for their philosophy. And let us not forget that it was they and not the representatives of the traditions they attacked who introduced argument as the one and only universal arbiter. They praised argument - they constantly violated its principles.
Argument | Beginning | People | Phenomena | Promise | Regard | Theories | Truth | Universe | Work | World |
Paul Gaugin, fully Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin
I made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer.
Promise |
In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel… In the first place, you shouldn’t believe in promises. The world is full of them: promises of riches, of eternal salvation, of infinite love. Some people think they can promise anything, others accept whatever seems to guarantee better days ahead. Those who make promises they don’t keep end up powerless and frustrated, and exactly the same fate awaits those who believe those promises.
Better | Blame | Eternal | Fate | Feelings | Guarantee | Harm | People | Promise | World | Fate | Think |
True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light, Imagination! which from earth and sky, And from the depths of human phantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning. Bid them love each other and be blest: And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's. Mind from its object differs most in this: Evil from good; misery from happiness; The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must endure. If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away; If you divide pleasure and love and thought, Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared: This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law By which those live, to whom this world of life Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife Tills for the promise of a later birth The wilderness of this Elysian earth.
Birth | Earth | Eternal | Evil | Gold | Law | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mind | Object | Pleasure | Promise | Sorrow | Suffering | Truth | Universe | World |